Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

9to5google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 1001 posts

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

#631

Post by sandos »

Aloha wrote: post #596
cududa wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I’m annoyed sure but I’ve gotten over a decade of free service. When I saw the announcement for a half second considered setting up an email server again then remembered what a massive pain in the ass that use to be and just going to pay the fee

I'm getting precisely one value added service over a regular google account - a custom domain. I dont need any of the other workspace related frippery, I don't want it, it makes some of the features of the account harder to use - it was better before it had the notion of an organization even. I just want to be able to create some gmail accounts under my domain, I'm not a business, I'm a guy who handed out email accou…

Same here, its the domain I care about. Its my fiancees last name in our countries TLD. Here name is really short and nice, so it has been awesome. This is a bummer, since her sister and fiancee are also using it. Thank god I have not been using it for more than an email alias, and the kids too.

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

#632

Post by herodoturtle »

nmjenkins wrote: post #457
iofiiiiiiiii wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I love that you guys are monitoring this :-)

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

#633

Post by srg0 »

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…

I'd say that a year or a year + 3 months is a reasonable transition period.

People need to assess the situation, evaluate existing solutions (including paying for the service), what needs to be done, etc. They're not doing it as their job, so do not necessarily know the current market offers.

Then they need to allocate time and resources to do the transition. Time, when the transition is the least disruptive, and the resources are usually availability if an in-house specialist. I know plenty of companies where upgrading a software take more than a year, with all their budgets, IT departments and external contractors. A typical G Suite user won't have all that expertise readily available.

That means that the transition will often require an IT enthusiast working in their free time. It's reasonable to assume that they will have at least one vacation per year to do that. So if the transition is ≥ 12 month, everyone and their mom should be able to do it.

If the transition is 3-5 months, I can see how it can be a problem even for commercial users with a dedicated task force.

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

#634

Post by scotty79 »

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?

Yes. Because non-free is infinitely more than free.

Imagine nothing changes, but now your wife demands you pay her cost of cup of coffee every time you have sex. Does that eff you up a little bit or do you barely notice?

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

#635

Post by Aloha »

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…

A reasonable standard is one month for every year of use, especially for those of us who are not businesses.

It's not 60 bucks a year for most of us, it's whatever the domain costs plus $6 per account times the number of accounts. In my case it's 720 dollars a year, which is more than it is worth.

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

#636

Post by greatpatton »

pc86 wrote: post #543
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…

Five months is not short notice, full stop. Even three months I would have a hard time thinking of any reasonable argument. The length of time you've used a service is irrelevant, the question is how much of a lift is it to switch, and nothing on Google Apps would take you anywhere near 90 days to switch out of. I pay something like $65 or $70/yr for O365 Outlook for a personal domain email, and the email is the only…

How really can you tell me how many project migration project that involve changing a whole basic infrastructure is done in less than 5 months from idea to completion in your company? For a personal project where you may not have a lot of time to invest in this is quite short.

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

#637

Post by ymolodtsov »

chimprich wrote: post #142
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…

> 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. Well I'm very annoyed. It's not that I might have to pay for a service, it's the unfairness of it. I've several friends and family members up with accounts on my domain to be nice to them to make life easier for them or b…

This has been a legacy feature for quite some time. Honestly, if it was just about email I think there would be nothing wrong with it. The main problem is that it's THE Google account for some people, which includes all their purchases and data and there's no way to move it.

Using G-Suite as your personal email has always been hell anyway.

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

#638

Post by nirui »

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…

> Microsoft's Family offering is way better

Well, it's called Google _Workspace_ now and their cheapest offering is _Business_ Starter at $6/user/month, and their "Individual" offering is $9.99/month (currently on sale for $7.99/month).

I guess Google is making the service business-oriented. For you, that means you need to consider whether or not the service will add value to your _business_ before buying them. It's not a family service.

Little rant here: to be completely honest, I don't really understand what Google has been doing in the past decade. As a search engine company, the clerk of the Internet if you will, you'd imagine that they would do anything in their power to create and maintain a vibrant Internet. Things like encouraging custom domain usage, lowering hosting costs etc should be naturally on bucket list. But instead of doing that, they became one of the company who focused on sipping on their user, all the while the Internet is more and more concentrated and hard to search. Well played ...

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

#639

Post by makerofthings »

I have this account. I am disappointed that I found out about it here, I don’t see any notifications that reflect this just one message saying I should /consider/ upgrading.

I’m just using this to host my personal email domain, I don’t have users, I don’t use any of the rest of it. Just email@mydomain hosted on gmail.

This is the strongest link I have to google, strange to see them shoot in the head like this. Looking through the thread, Fastmail seems to be the consensus?

Edit: As if by magic, there is a Gsuite vs o365 discussion in the leadership channel, I have an opinion now.

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

#640

Post by aaronbrethorst »

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 shouldn’t get to play the ‘get off my lawn’ card without disclosing your age.
Post reply on HN