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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

#651

Post by cik »

I have two domains - simply because of the failures of the google legacy tools. I have countless services that oauth dance through Google - services I care about. The problem is that I've never felt that I receive value for the Google services. The value is comparative. With a family of 6 this would cost me ~$45 per month. Frankly this doesn't have the 3x the value of Spotify (which I will pay for, forever), and value is comparative.

For this price point, I can pay for O365. With O365, I get more storage, and I get usable office tools such as Excel and Word. The real question is do I gamble - do I migrate and hope the entire universe doesn't break - like my android?

What happens with my google play purchases, are those forfeit as I migrate out a google account? Is it now time to get a free throwaway gmail account, purely for android purchases and nothing more? This is.... frustrating to say the least.

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

#652

Post by rekoil »

adamrmcd wrote: post #603
Aloha wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I'd gladly pay something but 60 dollars per month, every month? I'd be happy to pay 120 dollars a year for the service I'm getting now. Like one of the parallel commenters, I have given out accounts on my domain. I dont really need any more service than I have now, I don't need the full google workspace, I just want gmail on my custom domain, thats all really. The most annoying parts of this, google, the compan…

Exactly the same boat here. No email notifying me of the change either. Plus, what about all the third party web sites that offer nice buttons that say "Sign in with Google"? If you used your legacy Gapps domain to authenticate, do you think they all provide easy implementations to migrate your Google-one-click-authentication account to a same-email-new-local-password account? Hell no.

I haven't looked at it but I would hope that "Sign in with Google" provides the service using it with a stable ID other than the email address. But I can also see services ignoring that and just using the email address anyway...

If such a service only saved the email address when the user account was created it might be very difficult for them to fix this unless the do it really quickly and I happen to sign in to their service before all of this goes down.

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

#653

Post by cynix »

sfblah wrote: post #455

I have my personal email on this. Luckily, we have a small family foundation that is a 501(c)3. So, I've just requested to switch over to the nonprofit plan. I'm not sure if this is applicable to many other people out there, but it is, in principle, an option. One interesting thing I just learned is, by switching designation, I can get 2TB of storage per user for $3 a month. Right now I'm paying $10 a month for 1TB o…

How much time/money/effort does it take to create/maintain a non-profit foundation?

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

#654

Post by rekoil »

coffeefirst wrote: post #444
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…

Right. I think what's lost in translation is because it was free, a lot of early adopters used it in ways that are impractical to transition to paid—extended families, hobby projects, etc, and have been using them for a very long time. I could almost be sympathetic to them not wanting to build a migration tool. But the least they could have done is set up a way to permanently forward to another gmail account so at le…

They are creating a LOT of issues for people if they don't provide a tool to migrate the account to a non G-suite account. I'll be moving email elsewhere, but losing that account and all the services it's connected to will result in a lot of annoyances for me over the years as I discover to what services I've authenticated in this manner.

Not to mention Android devices and software purchases tied to the account, what happens to those unless Google provides a migration tool?

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

#655

Post by thenickdude »

boronine wrote: post #625
boronine wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Your solution may be best for usability. Researching further I found another solution that is perhaps best for privacy: https://github.com/markushinz/aws-ses-pop3-server SES -> S3 -> aws-ses-pop3-server -> desktop client with POP3 and SMTP Using this option, email is only really usable from a single device, but it avoids sharing private emails with yet another cloud, especially a free cloud that would share e…

EDIT: Wanting a minimal implementation, I instead made a script: 1. List email files in S3 2. For each file, download into a local maildir-style directory, then delete original 3. Use `mutt -f ./maildir` to browse

Hmm you could probably use the AWS CLI's "aws s3 sync" command for that right? Sounds pretty practical

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

#656

Post by kcartlidge »

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…

I totally get that this is largely about losing a decade of "purchased" stuff that is tied to the email address, meaning you're being heavily steered into starting paying for emails etc just to keep your purchased movies, apps, and so on.

If you do decide to move away it may not be as bad as you expect for the everyday email, contacts, and calendar.

In particular when it comes to your email you probably don't need to manually use IMAP.

I've migrated thousands of emails between different providers a few times, the last one being GMail to O365 then on to Fastmail when I decided I preferred them. Each occasion only took quarter of an hour or so and didn't involve manual work or IMAP downloads.

The not-so-secret secret is that many providers include the ability to import directly from other providers. In the case of Fastmail (which I've now used for years and totally recommend) their import options include IMAP but also include direct connections into GSuite to do it for you - in the background that option also uses IMAP as it happens, but other than providing the connection details they do the transfer server-to-server without your involvement.

Then you can copy over contacts as Outlook CSV files (which are recognised by most services), and calendars by exporting then importing ical files (connecting calendars only works until the connection breaks, in this case by your G account being switched off).

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

#657

Post by sandos »

SamCritch wrote: post #220

Oh this is a monster pain in the ass. All 5 family members are using this service for mail, Android phones/apps, TV, movies etc, plus I have a couple of extra accounts (e.g. separate email account for e-commerce orders). I already pay for extra Drive space and I buy movies frequently enough. All I want is to be able to use my own domain for my family, and carry on using the current settings on Android etc. Now I'll b…

Yeah, our kids got regular gmail accounts from the start because of family link and google assistant issues.

We are still 4 adults using my domain and it is in no way business-related. These prices are way too steep for simply having a nicer domain.

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

#658

Post by Thorrez »

y4mi wrote: post #241
webmaven wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously our use case isn't that common (it's been "legacy" for years) but still annoying to know that there's probably some script I could run to do this, but nobody has built the web UI for it. Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a 20% time project. Surely you aren't the only Googler in this situation?

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

Why would it be a paid tool? I would assume it would be free.

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

#659

Post by buro9 »

For those looking to migrate to Gmail, a story of the mechanics of doing so: https://medium.com/@buro9/one-account-all-of-google-4d292906...

The gist: You can't move everything, you lose things like purchases on apps... but you can move email, docs, map saved items, photos... the core data you can shift, the rest you cannot. Expect some difficulties along the way.

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

#660

Post by theshrike79 »

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?

Fastmail works pretty well and it's priced from $37.20/year/user. Still a bit pricey if you're not a heavy user and the mailbox is just for random website contacts.
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