Google Accused of Pushing 'Free For Life' G Suite Users Onto Paid Plans (theregister.com) 58
Google is again pressuring some longtime G Suite Legacy users to move onto paid Workspace plans, warning that accounts flagged as "commercial use" could lose access to Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and other services if appeals fail. "The trouble, according to users, is that the appeals system appears about as transparent as a brick," adds The Register. From the report: A reader alerted The Register to what appears to be a new crackdown on long-standing G Suite Legacy accounts, with similar complaints now piling up on Reddit from users accused of violating Google's non-commercial use policy, despite insisting they use the accounts only for family email and personal domains. Reports have been stacking up on Reddit's r/gsuitelegacymigration subreddit from users who say their long-running personal G Suite Legacy accounts are suddenly being classified as "commercial use" accounts and pushed toward paid Google Workspace plans by May 2026. A lot of users have been through this before. Google spent part of 2022 trying to wind down free G Suite Legacy accounts, then changed course after users running family domains made enough noise. Now some of those same users are being told they have fallen outside Google's rules after all.
Emails seen by The Register warn users their accounts have been "identified as being used for commercial purposes" and say Google may start suspending Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Meet, and other Workspace services if they do not either win an appeal or begin paying for Workspace subscriptions. "Please upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to continue using your services. Look out for a notification regarding the appeal process in Google Admin console or email," the email reads. "If you don't take action during your 45-day appeal period, Google will begin suspending your Google Workspace core services, including Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Meet. As a result, you will lose access to these core services and data." One wrongly-flagged user said the company reversed its decision after they filed a GDPR data request seeking evidence. Others were less fortunate, with some reporting that family-only custom domains were permanently classified as commercial despite failed appeals.
Emails seen by The Register warn users their accounts have been "identified as being used for commercial purposes" and say Google may start suspending Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Meet, and other Workspace services if they do not either win an appeal or begin paying for Workspace subscriptions. "Please upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to continue using your services. Look out for a notification regarding the appeal process in Google Admin console or email," the email reads. "If you don't take action during your 45-day appeal period, Google will begin suspending your Google Workspace core services, including Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Meet. As a result, you will lose access to these core services and data." One wrongly-flagged user said the company reversed its decision after they filed a GDPR data request seeking evidence. Others were less fortunate, with some reporting that family-only custom domains were permanently classified as commercial despite failed appeals.
Do they really need to make a buck here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google makes so much money, is it really that important for them to go back on their promises and screw over some individual with a free email address?
Nobody forced them to offer 'lifetime free' promises, you can afford to keep your promise, keep your promise.
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Problem is, lawmakers are too often on the teat. A proper response to this would be to not only force them to restore literally all of these domains but also allow people to use them for commercial use after this, just to remind Google that they don't run the world.
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Google makes so much money, is it really that important for them to go back on their promises and screw over some individual with a free email address?
The answer is obviously yes. There are pennies to be fleeced from the masses, and not fleecing the customer for every possible penny you can fleece them for is the greatest sin a corporation can commit. Promises mean nothing in the face of profit potential.
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Google has of late started resembling a lot like what Microsoft was during the days of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. The much beloathed company that it was. Microsoft has come down from its highs of loathdom, partly because of its irrelevance in the tech world now.
Re:Do they really need to make a buck here? (Score:5, Informative)
some individual
They aren't screwing over individuals. Individuals have a migrate path to other Google options which offer the same thing for free. What they are doing is screwing over small businesses. G Suite Legacy provided not just a free email, it provided email access for up to 100 individual accounts tied to a different domain, along with some groupware like Docs. Effectively they were providing the services of a small webhost provider without also providing the domain. That's also why they are suggesting users migrate to Workspaces. The cost recover is a potential maximum of $7/month/user. That's $8400 revenue per year for anyone who maxed out their previous free service.
Still a dick move though. They should be forced to retain their lifetime free promise.
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No, they don't have a free upgrade path for individual (or family) users. The key thing was the custom domain, which is only available with a paid account. When it was available, it wasn't that uncommon for a tech-savvy family to have their own custom domain backed by G-Suite. Now, there's no free option for this anymore.
There's no free option for new signups. Lots of us who set this up still have the legacy free G-Suite accounts. I'm not sure what triggers the "you might be using this for a business" check. My family is still using mine and Google isn't telling me we're a business.
The biggest problem with it, frankly, is that Workspace accounts have lots of restrictions that regular gmail accounts don't have. There's lots and lots of stuff that just doesn't work, and the list is growing year by year. This isn't spec
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I was never offered a free upgrade path and I only have 2 accounts: mine, and the admin one they force you to pay for. I was on the legacy plan and they forced me to pay.
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I was never offered a free upgrade path and I only have 2 accounts: mine, and the admin one they force you to pay for. I was on the legacy plan and they forced me to pay.
You must have signed up to change over before they backed off. They announced that everyone would have to switch and pay, but I waited because I didn't think it would stick, and it didn't. I have about 25 users on mine, so paying wasn't really feasible.
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That's my point. That's not an upgrade path, because the whole point of it was using your own domain. That's just data migration.
Fair, though my data -- and Play purchases -- were my bigger concern when they first started talking about just ending legacy GSuite.
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Well yes your edge case exists. But I bet the number of people who used G Suite with their own domain as an individual are sitting somewhere in the double digits. I agree with you, it wasn't very uncommon for a tech-savvy family to have their own custom domain. However given virtually all domain providers back in the day sold domain and hosting packages together, the vast majority weren't using G Suite.
Yes your edge case does unfortunately not have a free alternative. However I suspect if you have a single
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Against my better judgement, I fell for their trick for my personal domain and put it on google about 10 years ago (that has 5 users on it, all family). I will be looking to move off it, as it's clunky with outlook anyway, and I want family calendars to actually work, and it's clear they don't want to keep us free users.
It's just a matter of wanting to torch a day of my life to decide and rehost and wanting to land on a host that isn't going to make me keep migrating, but just take a little money every yea
Yes. Yes they do. (Score:3)
What a silly question. Of course they do. In fact it would be immoral *not* to make as many bucks as possible. I mean what would you do with that money anyway, buy gasoline? You're way better off handing it over to Google. Because they will do wonderful things with that money. Or something.
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They screwed themselves over. This "legacy" free suite is actually running a different version of software than core Workspace. Unless they give the free users the same version they are offering businesses today, they are stuck maintaining a whole separate codebase forever.
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You fail to understand the mind set of Google. YES they really do need to make a profit EVERYWHERE, and NO they do not understand what ENOUGH is. They will charge as MUCH as they can while delivering as LITTLE as they can, and then they will constantly push that margin. Their PE mindset runs businesses into the ground as uses customers for every drop they can squeeze. Welcome to the Machine...
Have a cigar.
Fear (Score:2, Troll)
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I had to look "G Suite" up because I had no idea what it was, it turns out that the only component I've ever used is gmail and that became necessary when I bought my first Android device after the "Email of death" killed Nokia's Symbian. I don't actually use gmail, it's the hook used for Android App updates.
Charging for Gmail is unthinkable, that would have so many knock-on effects.
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Charging for Gmail is unthinkable, that would have so many knock-on effects.
Google already charges for Gmail, if you go over your storage quota.
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Your statement is much too broad:
"Google is limiting free cloud storage for some new accounts unless users link a phone number to their account."
https://www.pcmag.com/news/goo... [pcmag.com]
https://www.cnet.com/tech/serv... [cnet.com]
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First of all, people shouldn't have to give their phone number to use email. Secondly, that's just for now.
Good news, they don't have to give their phone number to use email!
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Stopped with lifetime subscriptions after mIRC (Score:2)
It's okay, they'll shut it down soon. (Score:3)
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You should all know by now that as soon as your company commits to this, Google will shut it down: https://killedbygoogle.com/ [killedbygoogle.com]
This isn't killed by Google. This is renamed by Google. They want you to use exactly the same service under a different name except pay $7/month for it.
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You should all know by now that as soon as your company commits to this, Google will shut it down: https://killedbygoogle.com/ [killedbygoogle.com]
It's a widespread but inaccurate belief that Google kills everything. If you look closer, there's a distinct pattern to what they kill and what they keep, and it's mostly based on adoption. If a Google service -- free or paid -- has 100M+ monthly active users, it won't be killed. That number is a guideline, not a hard requirement. If it appears that a service is on track to attain that sort of "Google-scale" user base, and it has some monetization mechanism (usually a place to put ads), then it will sur
Trust Lost (Score:3)
At this point why would you trust Google for anything? They already dropped "Don't be Evil" from the top of their corporate code of conduct. Maybe they just haven't read the ending themselves.
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Define "trust". I don't think they'll take a bullet for me. I don't think my data is permanently safe and trust them to hold it for me without backup. I do trust they will provide a service as a paid customer. I do trust they will for a limited time provide a service as a free customer.
And for all the evil Google has done they have offered migration paths not just to other services, but also to get your own data offline, and also provided notice in virtually all cases of them fucking over users for their se
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They already dropped "Don't be Evil" from the top of their corporate code of conduct.
That's fake news, actually. A very widespread misunderstanding, but incorrect regardless.
What Google actually did was move "Don't be Evil" from the introduction of the code of conduct to the summary at the end.
Re: Trust Lost (Score:2)
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They must have reintroduced it then, because I remember searching for the phrase after hearing they made the change and not finding it
I searched for it and found it. I can't check now; I left Google last year.
The Grass Wasn't Greener (Score:3, Informative)
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GDPR is an EU thing (Score:2)
Here in 'Murica plutocrats get to grab us by the ePussy unless we bribe them with a gold RV.
Craziest thing they're doing it for no reason (Score:3)
These accounts actually have less features (usually from the small, niche ones, or sometimes for no rhyme or reason, like at some point reminders were disabled for all Gsuite/Workspace users - including the paying ones, they couldn't leave Google Play reviews for a long time, etc.) than the regular Gmail accounts. If Google is making money out of Gmail (and surely they do, and like to have probably billions of them) they shouldn't push the people out of these other free Gmail-like-but-with-other-Mx accounts.
And make no mistake, people aren't pushed into the paid accounts - especially that there's no family plan, you need to buy as many business subscriptions as users you have (family members+all throwaway accounts you setup to test Android phones or to allow your router to send emails or for your chinese Android TV where you don't want to enter your account that has all your other stuff including Google Pay and so on). Everyone learned their lesson: if you need a proper Google account get that Gmail account and stay with the herd. For the rest there are plenty of options, starting from free. Even Apple has Apple Business (Custom Domain Email) with a free tier!!!
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For individuals it looks like less features. For small businesses it's a different story. They are very much looking at migrating to paid accounts for business accounts. You need to buy subscriptions on a per user basis, but it's the multiuser access management they offer in a single place that has no free alternative.
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It's funny, because I would rather not use this service for the reasons you state. If Google offered another way to bring personal domains on to regular gmail, that's all I need. I bet that's all most of the free Workspace users want too.
What is it? (Score:2)
What is "G Suite"? If I have a Gmail address, am I using G Suite?
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no. Gsuite was their business product. Its now called Google Workspace. It originally started as "gmail for domains"
So you can have your own domain, manage users within your business etc.
But people who were on at the start were given free access for life (I was a beta tester for "gmail for domains")
But they keep trying to take it away and make us move to a paid version.
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If you don't know you don't have it. G Suite is the old name for Workspaces - a multi-user business plan for Google's stuff. https://workspace.google.com/ [google.com] The difference is that back in the day they had a free tier, Workspaces does not.
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You knew this was coming... (Score:2)
Cleaning up code? (Score:2)
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my bet is some "manager" has a fucking bee in their bonnet about these damn freeloaders.
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Probably too many "if subscription == "free for life geuite" " lines in their code and maintaining it / explaining it to new staff is becoming too troublesome?
explaining it to their MBAs is becoming too troublesome.
number something something (Score:2)
Gaming a System (Score:2)
Greedy selfish users start gaming Google's System;
Eventually Google's patience wears out;
With no easy way to distinguish,
Google adopts less generous policies.
Google is sane; Google is sound; If you have any doubt, find a local friendly Ph.D.. guy who knows about Alan Turing's Thesis and ask which side he's on.
(Hint, you can refine your search to the doctoral descendants of Turing on Mathematical Genealogy of that helps narrow your search.)
Those who game a big generous System, eventually e
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This is why my initial guess is that these accusations are BS.
Butchers used to do it too (Score:2)
Giving small pieces of sausage to children for free and after a certain age, pushed them to paying.