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Google Is Holding All Your Old Free G Suite Accounts Hostage

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

#111

Post by jsmith45 »

zerocrates wrote: post #28

So the last I heard about this, Google had relented to some extent and was going to offer some offramp for people who had data, purchases, etc. in an old free Apps for Domain/G Suite/Workspace account. They had a form you could submit to saying you wanted more information about those options. Has anyone heard any more on this front? I don't mind paying someone else just to run email for my domain (or potentially even…

Purchases won't go anywhere. You will be forced to the new plan, and then when you fail to pay you will lose access to the mail and the workspace apps (so will lose Docs Sheets, etc access), but the account remains a valid google account indefinitely.

From the FAQ:

> If my G Suite legacy free edition account is suspended, what happens to my additional Google services and paid content after July 1, 2022?

> In account suspension, you won't lose access to other Google services, including YouTube, Google Photos, and Google Play, nor paid content, including YouTube and Play Store purchases.

> You'll also be able to sign in to your Google apps (such as YouTube) and third-party sites with your G Suite legacy edition email address. You won’t be able to receive or send email, including authenticating password resets via email. Without access to Gmail in the suspendedstate, we recommend you use a different email provider to send and receive email messages, including changing logins and authenticating new passwords.

What seems to be weirdly missing is the option to convert to normal non-gmail google account, which is what most individuals or families willing to migrate to a different email host would want. If they offered that, it would allow keeping access to gdocs et al, and you would really only be losing mail hosting and the ability to administer other accounts.

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

#112

Post by navaati »

shon wrote: post #30
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

As others have said, you can set up aliases / groups and those do not require additional accounts. Also if you’re the only account then you can just configure a catch-all in the routing section so that anything@your domain goes to you. That’s no additional cost even on these basic accounts I believe. I use this so I can also track by using a new address for each service (e.g. twitter@mydomain.com, ebay@mydomain.com,…

I do the catch-all too, it works with the free version but will it still work with the paid version, even the cheapest tier ? At this point I have given around a crazy number of stuff@my.domain addresses, some of them for pretty important stuff, and while I don't mind paying for the service (I really like the GMail UI, matter of taste I suppose, and that justifies the price for me), I really need the feature as loosing it would be nearly as bad as loosing the "primary" email address.

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

#113

Post by jsmith45 »

Mindless2112 wrote: post #74
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 Servi…

Which is weird given that the term that allows them to modify the terms explicitly referenced number 18 as an exception.

The only valid argument for it being legal to discontinue this on you is that G-Suite is not GApps, and both are discontinued services anyway, with Google Workspace being the current offering. Which is presumably what they would argue if sued over this.

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

#114

Post by xp84 »

kelnos wrote: post #101
EduardoBautista wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

The paragraph prior reads: "After 60 days in suspension, you will no longer have access to Google Workspace core services, such as Gmail, Calendar, and Meet." I'd really like to know the full list of the "core services" that become unavailable. I've moved my email to Fastmail, but I still use Google Calendar and occasionally Google Meet. What else is included here? Chat? I use that too.

It sounds like Google will simply be converting your account to the kind that anyone can create at the first result that comes up when you google "create google account without gmail." This is fine. It's a full Google account like any other.

Calendars are very easy to migrate from one account to another (or even to other services). You can download one ics file that describes your whole calendar and import that file to a consumer Google Calendar account. That would probably be the least disruptive path for you.

You could import that same file at least to Apple's free iCloud, though I imagine it would be more disruptive because that service is different in many ways.

Now as for those who want gmail but can't afford the $6, I think it's as simple as you'd need to add Gmail to that "non-gmail" account, which would restore your access to the consumer version of Gmail. Hosting your domain's email does usually need to be done for money now, but with the money one has saved for the last 17 years or so, you should be able to do this for $30 a year or something - and simply configure consumer Gmail to pull messages in via POP from your "personal domain" email account, so that you get the Gmail UI and the pretty generous storage space. I know it's possible to configure gmail to send "From" the other address too, but it does so in a pretty conservative way that some clients show as "Bob Smith on behalf of Bob Smith" and both addresses are visible in the headers.

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

#115

Post by xanaxagoras »

tonymet wrote: post #107
xanaxagoras wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i know people who manage free GSuite accounts with 3000+ members. that’s $60k / mo in lost sales and at least $500 / mo cost to operate

Haha, fair enough, hadn't thought of that scenario. That is pretty insane to expect a free service to provide that in perpetuity.

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

#116

Post by seba_dos1 »

reaperducer wrote: post #97
OutsmartDan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use takeout.google.com to export your entire inbox.

I think you missed the part about the account being suspended. Can't log in? Can't take out.

Actually, I can login to account settings and can initiate a take out, but there's no way to include Gmail data in it (and trying to get to Gmail results in "account suspended" message).

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

#117

Post by croutonwagon »

mindslight wrote: post #109
croutonwagon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not entirely true. Microsoft is crazy on what it flags, and their AI straight just does "things". Their support has admitted as much when i had tickets open for months trying to white list basic GNU/Hurd list serves (that I didnt run). Im sure just running Mail in a Box on linode would 100% flag it. I KNOW google would because half the time i socks through one of my linodes (that i have used and owned the IP fo…

I run postfix on Debian on a longstanding Linode, haven't gotten around to setting up DKIM, and emails to businesses served by outlook.com go through just fine. I'm not rejecting the concern or the ambiguous worry about arbitrary judgement, but the surveillance web's captchas are much more draconian than spam filters.

You are probably right to an extent and I was probably over dramatizing it with the whole 100% part.

But having managed email across all three providers. Microsoft does just ignore rfc’s and basic standards pretty regularly and relies heavily on “AI”.

Google less so.

And when it works it works great. But once you get deliverability issues it’s a pain to resolve with them. Especially if you have to engage support.

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

#118

Post by Rebelgecko »

kelnos wrote: post #110
Rebelgecko wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(disclaimer, work for Google but not on this) Even though it worked for preexisting users, new user signups were closed a decade ago so I feel like the writing was on the wall

Yes, and I've wanted to migrate my GSuite account to a regular personal/free Google Account for years, but Google has offered me no way to do so. Google even has what I need as a product: "Google Account without GMail". It would let me use my email address at my personal domain as my Google identity, and work exactly like an @gmail.com account, except no GMail. This would be perfect, but Google hasn't bothered to giv…

If I understand your situation correctly, you don't really need to do a migration. The status quo (if you don't pay for GSuite after the deadline) is that you won't be able to receive send new emails, set up videoconferences in Meet, upload new stuff to Drive, etc. However you'll still be able to sign into the account, track your subscriptions in Youtube, install apps you've bought on the Play Store, sign in via OAuth on non-Google websites, etc.

edit: however I'm not sure how storage quotas work and if you'll be able to upload new things on Photos

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

#119

Post by zerocrates »

jsmith45 wrote: post #111
zerocrates wrote: post #28

So the last I heard about this, Google had relented to some extent and was going to offer some offramp for people who had data, purchases, etc. in an old free Apps for Domain/G Suite/Workspace account. They had a form you could submit to saying you wanted more information about those options. Has anyone heard any more on this front? I don't mind paying someone else just to run email for my domain (or potentially even…

Purchases won't go anywhere. You will be forced to the new plan, and then when you fail to pay you will lose access to the mail and the workspace apps (so will lose Docs Sheets, etc access), but the account remains a valid google account indefinitely. From the FAQ: > If my G Suite legacy free edition account is suspended, what happens to my additional Google services and paid content after July 1, 2022? > In account…

My understanding was that it was something approaching your last paragraph that they were looking at offering, either converting your Workspace account to a regular Google account, or offering some sort of thing to pull over your content: I have a regular Google account already, and would rather not keep around a neutered one in perpetuity for access to apps.

I would think that having such an account would also just be trouble down the line: being on a Workspace account already affects time of access to features routinely (and the new Pay never came to those accounts... though I feel like that's somewhat dead in the water already anyway?) and being in an even more limited non-paying weirdo customer subset can't possibly help any of that out.

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

#120

Post by judge2020 »

croutonwagon wrote: post #117
mindslight wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run postfix on Debian on a longstanding Linode, haven't gotten around to setting up DKIM, and emails to businesses served by outlook.com go through just fine. I'm not rejecting the concern or the ambiguous worry about arbitrary judgement, but the surveillance web's captchas are much more draconian than spam filters.

You are probably right to an extent and I was probably over dramatizing it with the whole 100% part. But having managed email across all three providers. Microsoft does just ignore rfc’s and basic standards pretty regularly and relies heavily on “AI”. Google less so. And when it works it works great. But once you get deliverability issues it’s a pain to resolve with them. Especially if you have to engage support.

> Especially if you have to engage support.

If i'm running an email inbox, responding to support regarding email deliverability is my lowest priority primarily because, if I respond once, it becomes an attack vector for dedicated spammers to try to extract information about the spam detection systems.

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