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

701–710 of 1001 posts

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

#701

Post by olivierduval »

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…

Actually, I think that the "right move" should be quite different: DONT STOP a service with a short deadline but DEGRADATE it with a long deadline.

If you STOP a service (or turn it to a PAID service) on short notice - and a service that is essential to people - then people will have to rush to find a solution... and will feel been extorted.

If you DEGRADATE the service more and more, people will slowly leave or upgrade to PAID, but they will have the choice.

Moreover, email is really a sensitive matter: it's a main point of contact for... well... email... but altogether for online service (IRS, website account, etc.) and in a way our digital life. So you can't just leave such a short notice. However, you have to let your FREE customer know that they have a choice to make quickly... so DEGRADATION is a good tradeoff I think

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

#702

Post by blacklight »

I'm so happy for having moved all of my content from G Suite to a self-hosted Nextcloud instance long ago. Now that Google has come up with this announcement, I simply decided to remove those services from my account (I had even forgotten that I still had them). All of my data and cloud services are safely stored somewhere else. Google's ransom strategy doesn't apply to me.

If you haven't don't so yet, move to a self-hosted solution. Remember that there's no cloud, it's just somebody else's computer. And if the guy who runs that computer decides that you have to start paying more for it, you don't want to find yourself in a situation where you have no options but to accept - unless you want to give up your data. Google's ransom policies have started to become so obvious: the more evil somebody becomes, the more banal and predictable their actions.

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

#703

Post by chimprich »

criddell wrote: post #53
rubyist5eva wrote: post #42

I have one simple rule. Never rely on Google for anything . Not email, not cloud storage, not infrastructure, *anything*. If you're going to use one of their products, cost-in the expense of moving everything out at a moments notice and keep constant backups of your data. My advice to anyone is to just avoid using Google for anything you expect to use long term.

A lot of us have been using it for more than a decade. I'm going to look around, but $6 / user / month doesn't seem outrageous to me.

$6/user/month is $6 * 12 * 100 = $7,200 a year if you have taken up their grandfathered offer of up to 100 accounts.

This is for a service which is basically identically (except in some ways where it is less functional) to their free offering but linked to a custom domain, and a service they told us they were planning for to be free forever.

I wouldn't mind paying something, but this charging per accounts is ridiculous for something that was free.

I would have used the service differently if I thought it was going to transition to a paid-for service.

For example, I have an elderly friend who I hooked up to the Google ecosystem using my domain because I thought it would be slightly easier to troubleshoot any issues he had if he had problems. He wasn't costing Google any more than if he had an @gmail account. (Presumably he brought in the same amount of money, rather: if he was profitable under a free account, then I imagine he was just as valuable on an Apps account).

He doesn't even use email, so the custom domain doesn't really help him. He will be just as happy to use a free @gmail account, but I will have to spend an afternoon some time in the next few months driving out to see him and updating his accounts and devices. And then doing the same the next weekend when I've missed something. And then doing the same for some other users.

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

#704

Post by hnarn »

nighthawk454 wrote: post #217

"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further". The problem here is there's no way out now. If 15 years ago you made the mistake of wanting gasp a domain for your email, you're basically roped into paying now. Almost everything a free G Suite user wants is identical to the free @gmail account, which is remaining free. Except the custom domain. Fine - but there's no way to just lose the custom domain at t…

> If 15 years ago you made the mistake of wanting gasp a domain for your email, you're basically roped into paying now.

Why?

What's stopping you (or me, because I'm also affected) from exporting all data from Google, paying another provider for an e-mail service and changing the DNS settings?

Expecting Google to offer free services within their own sphere is one thing -- making gmail a paid service would be absurd, but this is not even close to being the same thing.

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

#705

Post by deadgiveaway »

Upgrade from G Suite legacy free edition Where can I get help? If you have questions, you can contact: Google Workspace support

So I click on that link, and I get:

How to contact us To get phone, chat, or email support for your legacy free account at (my domain), you need to upgrade to Google Workspace.

Well, no, you see, that's what I want to talk about. About not upgrading to Google Workspace.

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

#706

Post by a2tech »

moberley wrote: post #180
a2tech wrote: post #107

Does anyone know of another service that accepts the email+whatever@domain.com wildcard? I've used that feature a lot over the years and its the only thing keeping me on Google Mail

Fastmail does generally support that. https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360060591053-Plu...

Awesome! I didn't think they supported this the last time I looked and its the only thing that was stopping me from migrating

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

#707

Post by nacs »

spronkey wrote: post #578
fckthisguy wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Migrating to another email provider might be a pain when it comes to importing older mailbox content, but any of the alternative email providers would be way cheaper in the long run. I use Protonmail for myself and around 5 others, with close to 10 mailboxes. I highly recommend it. Not sure what's available from them re. importing older mailboxes - I've never done it - but everything I've used jas been fantastic. Pro…

Do you know what plan you are on for Protonmail? I can't see anything that would allow that many mailboxes for anything less than 288 EUR a year?

I started migrating to Migadu last night after seeing this post. I have 5 domains and a few users and it should cost me $20 a year once their trial expires.

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

#708

Post by packetlost »

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?

It's a minimum of $6/m per inbox so if you have just 10 emails it's $720/year. That's not a small chunk of change if you're just using the email feature.

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

#709

Post by Masema »

ymolodtsov wrote: post #637
chimprich wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> it's THE Google account for some people, which includes all their purchases and data and there's no way to move it.

In these comments (on HN), I've seen claims that we'll still be able to login to Google with our old accounts, like how it's possible to have a Google account with an @yahoo login.

I've also seen people disputing that, though.

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

I've not had "hell"-level problems. It's all been working pretty well for me.

Post reply on HN