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Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

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Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#451

Post by bubblecheck »

Back of napkin calc as a sole prop:

* google has risen by over a trillion in value since I began using google apps for my custom domain w/ gmail and linked search.

* I was an early adopter of "google". Via data donation efforts as an end user, I have contributed substantially to google. Estimate: My lifetime value to google is greater than the average user by an order of magnitude.

* Avg. val of each of 10 billion homo sapiens at ~$1T USD: >$1,000 per homo sapien.

* Est. val of my data contribution over two decades of full time use: >$10,000.

* google, based on this inequity, I will settle for a lifetime of free grandfathered service per my status quo. Alternatively, I will continue to documented my grievances regarding your malicious, targeted, experimental negative emotional contagion data abuse practices -- with higher USA authorities -- until you are dismantled per long-established monopoly laws.

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#452

Post by mianos »

quesomaster9000 wrote: post #152
treesknees wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, I'm not a freeloader despite having my free account for almost 13 years. I was a proud owner of Nexus phones, Google Fi subscriber, Google Music (YouTube Premium) subscriber, I've purchased apps and tv content on Google Play, and I also started paying for Google Drive storage after they removed the free unlimited photo backups. I had YouTube TV for a time. Having a powerful Gsuite service was a drivin…

The long-tail isn't being considered here IMO. Dyn.com (nee DynDNS, in the dialup days) was bought out by Oracle, my nearly 20 year old lifetime VIP account will be terminated in May despite using a few thousand requests per month and in the past highly recommending their extortionately priced but rather excellent global load balancer and enterprise anycast services (to the tune of thousands of dollars per month). Li…

Identical situations, VIP dyndns, all Nexus phones, 3 Pixels and google apps. On the plus side, I can't think of any other free service I use. (Damn, just remembered I use the hobbyist license for fusion360, they are slowly crippling that but not a big bang).

What are you going to do for DNS? I just got static DNS for home so I guess I could host my own DNS but the custom gapps domain mail will be a hassle. Maybe just forward it to my other @gmail account?

Luckily I never trusted this to stay free (for all 10 years I think), so I never used the calendar or drive, just the email.

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#453

Post by ec109685 »

theossuary wrote: post #226

I'm definitely getting screwed over by this. I've hosted close friend's and family's email for a decade now on an old G Apps instance. We only ever used it for email on a custom domain. It was most useful because I could reset passwords for them if they forgot it. Now I'm going to have to figure out what to do. Microsoft's Family offering is way better (not saying much considering Google doesn't have one). Right now…

Both Microsoft and Yahoo offer the ability to do “imap in”. Could that be used to sync down the email from Google and then you reconfigure your DNS provider to forward email to your Yahoo/Microsoft personal email account and configure that account to send email using your custom domain name.

What is lost in that case?

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#454

Post by toast0 »

angus-prune wrote: post #406
samueldr wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea if they'll make a "gmail.com" account migration utility down the line? This is extremely concerning for Play store purchases, and anything non-email attached to the "google apps for your domain" account, like YouTube.

I dug into this with support and the docs. When you cancel workspace, the accounts remain active but lose access to just the workspace features (gmail, drive, docs, calendar etc). The accounts will remain the same for things like google play, youtube etc and you won't lose access to any purchases. The biggest impact I can see, other than the headache of migration, is that former GFYD email address can NEVER be used f…

> The biggest impact I can see, other than the headache of migration, is that former GFYD email address can NEVER be used for docs, drive etc, even on the same terms as a free personal account.

If the legacy product is the same as the paid product, you may want to rename your accounts/switch domains before you close the workspace. Then there wouldn't be a naming conflict.

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#455

Post by sfblah »

I have my personal email on this. Luckily, we have a small family foundation that is a 501(c)3. So, I've just requested to switch over to the nonprofit plan. I'm not sure if this is applicable to many other people out there, but it is, in principle, an option.

One interesting thing I just learned is, by switching designation, I can get 2TB of storage per user for $3 a month. Right now I'm paying $10 a month for 1TB of storage from Google Drive. So actually this will wind up making things cheaper for me.

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#456

Post by nighthawk454 »

fragmede wrote: post #393
nighthawk454 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not _absolutely_ roped in, but practically, yes. The cost of switching is ridiculously higher than the cost of just paying up - it's not a realistic option. Which, considering they also control how hard it is to switch, is a bit artificial. It would be a little different if they did this to _everyone_ and completely removed the free @gmail plans. But instead they're targeting GSuite users when @gmail plans are _right…

Not really - that was the whole point of getting my own domain, so I could move it over if something like this ever happened. Mail to me gets sent to user@domain.name, both before and after the switch. You can argue the other services like google drive and docs are harder to move, and that's true, but those also have their own alternatives that aren't quite as reliant as email is in having the same user@domain.name f…

No, the domain is irrelevant now. Technically, I can keep my email going to my own domain. But this is the least of my concerns. The only "way out" is to completely de-Google-ify. But short of that I pretty much have to pay them.

The entire Google account will be suspended unless there's payment. I'd have to audit everything my Google accounts are used for, find alternatives, train users on the N new services, and deal with all the migrations. Which frankly is impractical. Some stuff is not easily migrate-able (YouTube subs/history, Android purchases, ...), and unless I don't need a Google account again ever, I'll probably end up migrating to an @gmail one at least partially.

But at least I keep the domain?? Which I'd then be paying a mail provider about the same amount for. Plus probably more for any other paid services.

To say nothing of convincing and migrating my family/other users.

If I could only keep the Google account going with my own mail/services that'd be something. They say I "may" retain access to YouTube and Photos, for now. And the account will be in a 'suspended' state that requires payment to get out of.

It's not exactly a surprise, and I know "that's what I get" for using Google services. But it's still scummy.

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#457

Post by nmjenkins »

iofiiiiiiiii wrote: post #378
wodenokoto wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re not using the productivity suite (docs, drive, sheets and whatnot) why not go with the little guy and use Fastmail? $5/user with 30gb or 100gb per user for $9/month Their support replies faster than google :)

Does Fastmail do mailing lists? That's the one thing I use in GSuite other than the basic email.

We do, but it's a separate product: https://www.topicbox.com/

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#458

Post by bshep »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #236
theossuary wrote: post #226

I'm definitely getting screwed over by this. I've hosted close friend's and family's email for a decade now on an old G Apps instance. We only ever used it for email on a custom domain. It was most useful because I could reset passwords for them if they forgot it. Now I'm going to have to figure out what to do. Microsoft's Family offering is way better (not saying much considering Google doesn't have one). Right now…

> But I have no idea what the migration of a decade of email across 5 inboxes will look like; not to mention Calendar and contacts. Contacts and Email seems to be the easy part: you can download the emails via IMAP to a client like Thunderbird, and the re-upload them on a new account. Years ago I did this transferring from one G Suite account to another for a friend, worked very well. Contacts can be exported in CSV…

you can use a tool called imap-sync ( at least thats what i remember it was called)

Re: Google requiring all ‘G Suite legacy free edition’ users to start paying

#459

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

pitterpatter wrote: post #138

So what happens if you have Google Voice with a legacy Google Apps account? https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_us/pricing.html shows that Google Voice is a separate add-on from Google Workspace

You can transfer a phone number from that sort of account to a Gmail account. I just tried it and it seems to work. Go into settings then transfer. It takes you to the legacy page to do the transfer, oddly.
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