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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

#521

Post by chii »

Kalium wrote: post #504
signal11 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're complaining that a service you use all the time for a decade for free now might cost the equivalent of a cup of coffee per month? It’s easy to paint customers as frightful moaners, but that’s a surefire way to lose customers, or at least alienate them. Google’s Reader debacle comes to mind. In particular, the short notice period (3 months + 2 months grace) for something people have been using for a decade is…

> In particular, the short notice period (3 months + 2 months grace) for something people have been using for a decade is jarring. For me, this raises the obvious question. How long a notice period is long enough? Six months? Eight? A year? Five years? A decade? I think we can all agree that a decade would be an excessive and unreasonable expectation. > By the same token, people have been using free Gmail accounts fo…

> Which is to say incredibly hostile because people have come to view free Gmail accounts as a basic public service for which no payment will ever be required under any circumstances.

which is called entitlement. And i'm seeing more and more of this sense of entitlement as more and more people (esp. young people) being exposed to the internet - and this seeps into their other lives offline.

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

#522

Post by theossuary »

l33tman wrote: post #485
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…

You're complaining that a service you use all the time for a decade for free now might cost the equivalent of a cup of coffee per month? I'm all about Google being evil and all that, but spending valuable aggression on this seems a bit excessive.. The Google Takeout system gives you all of your email in a format you might be able to import into another system?

I host 7 emails right now, it'd cost $500/year for email moving forward.

I'd be happy to convert accounts to personal Gmail accounts and do mail forwarding. I'd be happy to move to a family plan for $100/year.

After being a user for a decade, you'd think Google would provide me a reasonable way to pay them for their services. But I can't swing $500/year for email.

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

#523

Post by jdofaz »

Over the last year or so I've worked to remove any dependency on my google account. After seeing this I decided to rip the band-aid off. Mostly because I didn't want to accidentally get charged for something. Like others said I had to upgrade my account to the new plan and then cancel the subscription, I then added "Cloud Identity Free" as a subscription.

I can still access the handful of things I purchased and my android device is still able to to use google play with the same account.

If I try and go to google drive, gmail or calendar I get: "We are sorry, but you have cancelled your subscription to Google Workspace. You will need to re-subscribe to Google Workspace in order to use Google Workspace services like Gmail."

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

#524

Post by milleramp »

mianos wrote: post #452
quesomaster9000 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jus…

I have been using NoIP for my simple home setup. It’s free but requires a monthly acknowledgment, but it’s relatively quick and easy.

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

#525

Post by addicted »

wdtrsd wrote: post #436
apohn wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I just discovered is that Office 365 Family only lets you use custom domains if they are hosted by GoDaddy. If you want to use another domain registrar you have to get Microsoft 365 Business, which has a similar price as Google Workspace :( There's no way I'm moving my domain to GoDaddy.

There are reddit posts showing how to bypass the Godaddy requirement. I used them to setup Office 365 for my family. I have since moved the family emails to icloud mail since we already pay for icloud+ and I get multiple domain support, and aliases.

If I was starting off afresh I certainly wouldn't do that.

All it takes is for some partnership manager who deals with the GoDaddy rep to get enough pressure put on them about this for the workarounds to become impossible within a few weeks.

And unlike most other things, this being unofficial, there need not even be an announcement with a few weeks to months of transition time. You'll just wake up overnight and it's not working.

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

#526

Post by blagie »

quesomaster9000 wrote: post #332
y4mi wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not just googlers, the legacy accounts where available to everyone at the start. but the venn diagram overlap of people * willing to pay for such a tool, * not having switched to another provider since * and not willing to start paying for it now will be tiny

You're forgetting the circle of ageing techies that used to use AltaVista and now (in)directly control large budgets, have long memories and significant clout when it comes to guiding our replacements into making the right decisions and educating them about corporate (mis)trust.

I'm in that circle. I've cost Google millions of dollars in business due to a history of similar dick moves on their part. This adds just one more to the list. The organization I work at will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever consider using Google for anything business-critical, and neither will businesses I advise in various roles.

I have at least a dozen relatives on my Google family domain. We're looking at a lifetime cost of tens of thousands of dollars if I were to switch to Workspace, which is a non-starter.

One possibility is to finally incorporate my family foundation as a 501(c)3, if we can do that in time. It's been on my to do list.

I'm not even sure where to go from here, but I have things like Android apps I've bought on this account, as does my family. Or I guess the word is "rented." I have a bunch of logins with Google OAuth. Or I guess past tense.

I feel like there's a class action in here somewhere.

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

#527

Post by mgraczyk »

mjg59 wrote: post #509
mgraczyk wrote: post #49

I'm a Google employee who just found out about this. I'm not annoyed that I have to pay, it's been ~13 years of free service and I don't think Google is obligated to continue providing this to me. The annoying part is that Google doesn't provide any migration tool, but there are migration tools for Google Edu accounts so that graduating students can migrate their data to personal Google accounts. The software is evid…

Google employees are entitled to a discounted tier ($0.75 per user per year, I think), and that will continue even if you leave the company.

oh lol should have checked first, thanks!

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

#528

Post by jdofaz »

the-iceman wrote: post #266
kevincox wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is a good option here because I don't think you can use the same domain. You would need to switch to a service that can have multiple mailboxes on a domain.

I can handle setting up new email that still uses the domain. The issue is all the data/purchases/etc with the Google Apps account that can't be transferred to a regular Gmail account.

Add "Cloud Identity Free" to your subscription, seems to have let me keep all my purchases. (I canceled my legacy subscription today to avoid future charges)

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

#529

Post by phs318u »

wdtrsd wrote: post #436
apohn wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I just discovered is that Office 365 Family only lets you use custom domains if they are hosted by GoDaddy. If you want to use another domain registrar you have to get Microsoft 365 Business, which has a similar price as Google Workspace :( There's no way I'm moving my domain to GoDaddy.

There are reddit posts showing how to bypass the Godaddy requirement. I used them to setup Office 365 for my family. I have since moved the family emails to icloud mail since we already pay for icloud+ and I get multiple domain support, and aliases.

Interesting. I didn't realise Apple supported multiple domains. That must have happened after I moved away. I actually went the other way from Apple to Microsoft. I run a Linux laptop and iPhone, and the kids run all Apple kit. I've found the Linux support for MS better than for Apple (Evolution for email and calendar; OneDrive for live home directory sync across devices; and I use Firefox for password synchronisation). I tried to find a way to use iCloud storage for file sync with Linux but found nothing.

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

#530

Post by rnk »

chii wrote: post #521
Kalium wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In particular, the short notice period (3 months + 2 months grace) for something people have been using for a decade is jarring. For me, this raises the obvious question. How long a notice period is long enough? Six months? Eight? A year? Five years? A decade? I think we can all agree that a decade would be an excessive and unreasonable expectation. > By the same token, people have been using free Gmail accounts fo…

> Which is to say incredibly hostile because people have come to view free Gmail accounts as a basic public service for which no payment will ever be required under any circumstances. which is called entitlement. And i'm seeing more and more of this sense of entitlement as more and more people (esp. young people) being exposed to the internet - and this seeps into their other lives offline.

You do know they make money from you using Google Gmail because they serve ads. And you're probably logged in while you're searching and using other Google services so they know who you are and your history & they can show you better ads. Google actually does make money. If everyone is not logged in when they're using Google, Google will be less able to serve relevant ads and make less money.
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