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

Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

nationworldnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 127 posts

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#71

Post by EduardoBautista »

kadoban wrote: post #35
insaneirish wrote: post #24

> Google is holding all your old free G Suite accounts hostage They are not holding these accounts hostage. You can export mail from Google. You can change your MX records to different servers. I've been bit as much as anyone by Google killing products, but honestly, it's amazing they've kept this product free for so long. And in this case, the product isn't being killed; they've simply decided to start charging for…

So now our choices are: pay $6 per user per month for essentially what everyone gets for free, or our accounts, which are used for all kinds of free Google services, stop working.

> If you don’t upgrade to a Google Workspace subscription, you will not lose access to other Google services, including YouTube, Google Photos, and Google Play, nor paid content, including YouTube and Play Store purchases.

https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?article_ur...

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#72

Post by duxup »

I feel like at some point we have to accept that unless we want to have stuff like this happen and/or sell our personal data all the time…. we as users also need to pay for stuff.

We want everything free, and I don’t blame anyone for that desire but when nobody pays the bills it comes due in some way. The result sucks when the math works out…

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#73

Post by mxuribe »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #37
insaneirish wrote: post #24

> Google is holding all your old free G Suite accounts hostage They are not holding these accounts hostage. You can export mail from Google. You can change your MX records to different servers. I've been bit as much as anyone by Google killing products, but honestly, it's amazing they've kept this product free for so long. And in this case, the product isn't being killed; they've simply decided to start charging for…

> You can export mail from Google. I've tried to do it on some old G Suite accounts that got suspended and no, you can't.

As @Freak_NL noted, IMAP can help here.

What i have been doing for years now is to setup Thunderbird leveraging maildir...Now, the majority of the time i do read my mail via google's webmail...but on occasion i do use Thunderbird for reading mail. But the benefit of having my mail locally accessible - as indivudual files under maildir - is that things are snappier for going through all of my messages...But the secondary benefit is that i can (and have been for years) backing up my email as files...In essence all the files under thunderbird's maildir can be copied/pasted to some other storage place/folder/network share/whatever...so i get speed and protection! Plus this (having all my email messages locally-accessible) makes it trivially easy to "re-import" (if you want to call it that) my email from GSuite over to any other IMAP-capable mail provider...it is as easy as dragging files from my GSuite-account in thunderbird over to the other, non-GSuite account within said same Thunderbird view. (Granted it takes time to push up email to the new provider this way if you have tons of messages...but its easy.) I'm sure there are more efficient methods to get your messages from Goolgle and shifted over to another mail provider...but this is what i've done, and it works. YMMV depending on the number of messages you're dealing with, and any constraints your new/other mail provider might have in receiving loads of "new" messages.

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#74

Post by Mindless2112 »

Invictus0 wrote: post #46

Why would you ever expect a service like this to be free in perpetuity? It's hardly a bait and switch: you never paid for anything, and still got 15+ years of service!

> 18. Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer the Service to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of the Service (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer; provided that such commitment: (i) does not apply to the Domain Service described in Section 4 above; and (ii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Service in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of the Service for a fee. [1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110429023658/http://www.google...

Of course, Google later removed this clause from the ToS.

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#75

Post by kelnos »

jayknight wrote: post #61
dddddaviddddd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tool hasn't been released yet, right?

I check this page every week or so: >In the coming months, we'll provide an option for you to move your non-Google Workspace paid content and most of your data to a no-cost option. This new option won't include premium features like custom email or multi-account management. You'll be able to evaluate this option prior to July 1, 2022 and prior to account suspension. We'll update this article with details in the comin…

Oh, this is quite interesting. The one thing I am worried about is that it's not clear if it will let us migrate to a "Google Account without GMail" (which lets you use a custom domain to create a free Google Account, see https://accounts.google.com/SignUpWithoutGmail?hl=en), but will instead require that we migrate to an @gmail.com account.

I really don't want that; I want to keep my Google Account identity the same (with my custom domain). I've already moved my email from GMail to Fastmail, so I don't need Google to host my email. Unfortunately this support page doesn't give much in the way of details, and I expect there won't be much time between when they release this tool (and I inevitably am able to confirm it won't do what I want) and when I'll have to start moving my data, which will require writing some specialized tools if I want to migrate as losslessly as possible to a new Google Account.

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#76

Post by xanaxagoras »

tonymet wrote: post #66

Paying for subscriptions is the way to go. We can't expect companies to give expensive services away for free, and we don't seem to like being merchandized with ads.

The service itself is not expensive. For example, my ISP offers it for free, so does my registrar. They're effectively selling an overpriced software subscription (to gmail) and threat of lock-in is at least some part of the marketing tactic.

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#77

Post by smallerfish »

insaneirish wrote: post #24

> Google is holding all your old free G Suite accounts hostage They are not holding these accounts hostage. You can export mail from Google. You can change your MX records to different servers. I've been bit as much as anyone by Google killing products, but honestly, it's amazing they've kept this product free for so long. And in this case, the product isn't being killed; they've simply decided to start charging for…

> honestly, it's amazing they've kept this product free for so long

Really? I remember them saying these early adopter grandfathered in plans would be free for life.

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#78

Post by kevingadd »

aftbit wrote: post #15
kevingadd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even mind paying for it but the nature of the transition and the cost for the features is obscene. For example, I have a secondary address for business reasons and in the new g suite that has to be an "account" which costs money every month

No it doesn't? You can set up unlimited aliases, afaik. If you want to have separate access however, it does. I'm currently planning to migrate my script-sending email address to mailgun or SES instead of using a separate gmail user.

That's not a separate address/mailbox, that's a forwarding alias

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#79

Post by IgorPartola »

kelnos wrote: post #69
insaneirish wrote: post #24

> Google is holding all your old free G Suite accounts hostage They are not holding these accounts hostage. You can export mail from Google. You can change your MX records to different servers. I've been bit as much as anyone by Google killing products, but honestly, it's amazing they've kept this product free for so long. And in this case, the product isn't being killed; they've simply decided to start charging for…

I've been making a list of all the Google services I use that are tied to my account, and what migrating to a free/personal account would look like. Yes, I can get pretty much all the data out, but it's incredibly lossy, and much of it just cannot be imported into the new account at all, and some of it that can be, will require me to write a bunch of tools that use Google's various product APIs. I've already moved my…

Sounds like Google was providing you a bunch of valuable services for free for a long time. Not defending Google but your argument is not compelling.

Re: Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

#80

Post by amanzi »

tonymet wrote: post #66

Paying for subscriptions is the way to go. We can't expect companies to give expensive services away for free, and we don't seem to like being merchandized with ads.

Google has a habit of offering free services that other companies can't compete with, and then after they've killed off the competition they start charging for the services. Classic example is Google Photos - they killed off a bunch of competiors in the early days who couldn't compete with Google's unlimited free storage.
Post reply on HN