Google Workspace Goes All in on Shadow IT (techcrunch.com) 34
Google today announced a new version of Workspace, the company's productivity service that you probably still refer to as G Suite. With the new -- and free -- Google Workspace Essentials plan, Google wants to bring more business users onto the platform by offering them the basic Workspace productivity tools -- with the exception of Gmail. From a report: Until now, in order to use Workspace with a non-Google email address, you had to sign up for the $6/month/user Business Starter account after a 14-day trial. That paid plan is not going away, but all you now need to do is sign up with your work email and you're good to go. No credit card needed. The new free plan is essentially the existing entry-level Business Starter plan, but with a reduced storage quota of 15 GB (down from 30). Otherwise, though, you can use Google Meet with up to 100 users for up to 60 minutes in each call, get access to Spaces for work collaboration and Chat for gossiping about their co-workers. All of the standard tools like Sheets, Slides and Docs are also included, of course. Since you already have an email address from work, though, there's no Gmail included in this edition, which makes sense, given that it would be tough to send out emails with your work address from there, leading to all kinds of confusion.
Going to have to block this at the border (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, dear coworkers. Can't have you violate security policies wholesale by sticking everything we make money with on google's servers.
So no reintroduction of free account (Score:3, Funny)
So no reintroduction of free âoegoogle apps for my domainâ?
I am leaving google with some dislike. And so will many of the old free account holders - who are typical IT nerds in control of company spending. I guess Google will lose money on making IT staff their enemy.
Re: win-win (Score:2, Insightful)
so it is a win-win and at what cost eh? Google is a known data rapist.
Anyone who trusts Google with anything is just feeding their insatiable thirst for data, all sorts of data on each and everyone of us.
At the individual level, we can manage it but when businesses go all-in with the chocolate factory then it gets really serious. The security of your corporate data is essential to the life of your business.
Going with AWS or other cloud services is one thing but trusting Google with the apps which will proba
Unlike MS Office? (Score:1)
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I doubt it will cost them much money short term but it certainly does cost them good will.
I don't frankly understand it because they a giving away all the same stuff elsewhere and that is apparently profitable with the data they can gather. Having a vanity domain if anything should make your more trackable and generate even more marketable data about you and the people you interact with.
Given its all the same applications, on presumably the same infrastructure, I find it downright hard to believe kicking s
It makes enough of a difference (Score:1)
In light of what Google just tried (Score:4, Insightful)
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Surely they got overwhelmed by the content from Photos and have enough (for whatever purposes they might want them, like training AIs and whatnot), hence the move from last year to (severely) limit the free space. But first of all Gsuite users are a drop in the ocean of 3+ billion active Andro
More free users to compensate the ones lost (Score:2)
I wonder who's going to fall for this AGAIN? They've seen now that they're losing too many Gsuite (now Workspace) users and domains and are trying to compensate by offering anyone a seriously nerfed version OF A FULLY FREE GMAIL ACCOUNT?
Which beside being actually worse is also prone to the same "pay or else" (and something like $12/user/month) just when things take off and especially for things you can't easily port (like more complex collaborative docs documents, forms, etc.) or Meet or whatever thing for
Gmail argument is specious (Score:2)
"Since you already have an email address from work, though, there's no Gmail included in this edition, which makes sense, given that it would be tough to send out emails with your work address from there, leading to all kinds of confusion."
It's not tough; it's almost trivially easy to set up aliases in Gmail. All you need is the ability to receive an email at the address you want to set up as an alias.
You can even make that alias your default address for sending from Gmail... unless Google changes that to s
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really its "trivial" to set up gmail to setup a gmail alias for support@microsoft.com and you can easily make that address your default sending address too? Do tell! I'm sure inquiring minds want to know.
Meanwhile, in the real world, doing that would require SPF and DKIM related setup on your work email domain to allow any mail you send not to be just dropped as spam, plus MX record setup if you want any mail actually delivered to your gmail mailbox, and google would surely have some setup hoops to jump thr
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You might want to read more than one sentence when you're responding to a comment. It's pretty obvious you didn't even get to the second sentence.
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Which sentence is that?
"All you need is the ability to receive an email at the address you want to set up as an alias."
I suppose while that excludes spoofing microsoft.com that doesn't really change anything else in my post. I can receive email to me@myworkemail.com and that still doesn't make it "trivial" to send and receive from it via gmail.
(Assuming I wanted to, which I don't.)
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basically he means you can forward your mail to gmail automatically, some DNS providers offer that.
Gmail will let you set the reply-to header to your other e-mail address at your domain. They probably also let you set the from line to something like
from: DarkOX DarkOx@slashdot.org
In practice this more likely to get your mail stuck in someones spam filter, its totally leakly a lot of clients are going to display the gmail.com address as the sender anyway. Basically its klugey workaround that does not really
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Hehe..
Where I work, setting up even basic forwarding rules forwards to external addresses is restricted and has to be setup by IT, and even internal forwarding rules are monitored and require approval. And the SPF and DMARC policy are set to instruct servers to discard mail trying to spoof. Plus as you said, lots recipients will probably see the gmail address which means replies will now bypass your work mailbox, and both your legal and marketing teams will be on you. (legal for violating retention policy e
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Yes, it requires a couple DNS records (SPF/MX), obviously.
Suggestion to attract more business users (Score:2)
I think if Google wants to attract more business users, they could try making a product that is "good". They've gained some traction making a product which is a half finished slapdick attempt to sort of make a product that's mostly functional, but I think they could really dominate the cross platform synergistic business collaboration space with a product that was "good".
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I think if Google wants to attract more business users, they could try making a product that is "good".
They have that. It's email.
Now they've just admitted that the rest of it is worth nothing.
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I think if Google wants to attract more business users, they could try making a product that is "good".
They have that. It's email.
Now they've just admitted that the rest of it is worth nothing.
The problem is not what it's worth, the problem is the perennial of convincing people to pay for it when they're already getting it free (news organisations have the same problem). Google was trying to do that by differentiating it from the "home" product with "enterprise" features like retention. Unfortunately in business this is a cost contre and these additional features are the kind of things only IT and legal care about. Also they don't get you small to medium businesses who are on tight margins and ha
Free kills the competition (Score:3)
Eventually the bait and switch will work, because the alternatives will have been starved. It's not just a bait and switch, it's also price dumping. Google and the other big tech companies need to be broken up, because this is monopoly abuse.
Free... Just like the Legacy Accounts? (Score:1)
how odd (Score:2)
Doesn't really help people who just want the email (Score:1)
I just use gmail on my custom domain. I don't really care for all the other tools.
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