Yup, I'd pay $10 per month for my family. But I'm not paying $50 or $60 per month.

The only difference over the free Google Workspaces is the domain name.

A more reasonable approach would’ve been to offer custom domains as part of Google One, whose pricing is far more family-friendly.

Eg, Google One provides 100GB of storage (shareable with your family Google accounts) for £16/year. Just let those who want that to link it to custom domains — Apple (iCloud+) and MS (MS 365) already offer this.

That would be a great solution. I would imagine many "legacy free" users are old GMail for Domains users who just want the same Google One functionality of @gmail.com addresses but with a custom domain.

I don't even use my domain name for anything but email anymore, but I certainly don't want to give up the address I've been known by for a dozen years.

As you can imagine, my username @gmail.com gets too much spam to be usable.

Exactly! Or provide a migration path - I went back to a standard gmail account, but the vast majority of my purchases, photos etc are in my old GAFYD account.

Google are going to lose even more goodwill without a migration path.

Please do this Google.

This is what I'd imagine most of the people on Legacy Google Workspaces want.

That would be perfect for me!

This should be done.

(full disclosure, I work for Google but have no special insights here other than reading the article)

My interpretation is that you'll still be able to use your account on Youtube, Play Store, etc. You'll just lose the workspace specific features like Drive, so use the tools that let you dump that data.

"After 60 days in suspension, you will no longer have access to Google Workspace core services, such as Gmail, Calendar, and Meet"

From https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217

Exactly, since Android and Youtube aren't "workspace core services" (the next sentence after the one you quoted explicitly mentions YT and Photos), your purchases are probably safe past the deadline.

However, now what do you sign into your Android device with? Google's products work... poorly... across multiple accounts. I needed to change my email address a number of years ago, which is impossible with Google's apparent use of email addresses as a primary key or something, and my Google account has had to live in a very messy state ever since... the old address has to be the core of the account for all services, even if I'm handing out and sending as a new address... and that account is an extra security vector into it... (Meanwhile, Microsoft just lets you add and remove email addresses from your Microsoft account, including changing and removing the primary.)

I wonder if Google will support a workflow for users "leaving", whereby the can keep their "Google Account" under the same email address, but with Gmail disabled.

This could be a reasonably low friction way to keep the system working without breaking the "email address is unchangeable per-account" assumption - the underlying Google account can continue to exist, even if the associated MX record disappears, or Google Workspace ceases to provide service.

This is how Google accounts work today if you ignore the "default" sign-up path, and take the route where you create a Google account under an existing external email address.

Not sure if this applies: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/27441

Thank you. I was panicking and clearly not reading clearly.

That "May" still worries me, but hopefully it will still work fine.

It will work fine until “may” is no longer profitable for Google. I am 100% done w/ the Google ecosystem.

I think that depends on how much storage this person is using. Google includes Photos against the billed quota, so if you have more than 15GB of photos then Google will surely do something, either restrict access or eventually delete the data.

Glad that’s your interpretation and not an official statement from your employer who is interrupting a lot of peoples workflows and digital lives.

Dealing with the cloud will always be like dealing with Darth Vader. ("I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.") The idea that anyone actually chooses to depend on this when alternatives are out there is incredible: It's simply a horrible arrangement for both consumers and businesses.

True, but it's a compromise most of us are forced to make. The vast majority of people know that a custom domain name makes their email more professional, but wouldn't have the faintest idea of how to even begin to manage one if it weren't for services like this one. (Or, at the very least, wouldn't have known how to do it in 2007-2010 which this service was marketed as "free forever.") These cloud services are basically just "linux admin done for you" since most of us don’t have the expertise.

Same here, and I'm running it for extended family so I'm not planning to take on the cost (and neither are they).

I need to find a nice alternative for email with my domain that's going to work for us and not cost me a fortune.

I'm not even massively concerned about Play Store purchases, I barely use any paid apps anymore anyway I can buy them again if I have to.

Since the domain was also bought through GSuite, how do I get that out?

I’ve found Zoho to be fantastic. They offer good value, some extra shit if you want it, and you can bring your own domain. I think it’s about $35 USD a year.

Likewise I also use Zoho mail and it's good.

But, after auditing a number of their enterprise products, dealing with their security team and seeing the quality of the code they produce I have to say they are a very significant security risk.

I used Zoho for an event's domain, and didn't like how they removed POP/IMAP for their free version without any prior notice.

I'd trust them not to pull the rug any further even less than Google.

Zoho offers a "Free Forever Plan" which allows one domain. It's excellent. I actually prefer their web UI to Gmail.

"Free Forever" somehow isn't legally binding, every year many companies renege on their promises or surreptitiously find ways to de-grandfather their customers plans via BS semantics or outright deceit.

Free Forever*

* - while the current Terms of Service last

Depending on what your family members do with it, you may be able to get by with one paid account and some aliases, routing, etc, to forward emails somewhere else.

To be fair, they stopped giving it away for free 10 years ago (I asked Urs at the time, and he said “it’s too hard to support and test another edition”, whatever). But I’m pissed as well, probably just gonna pay.

80,000 fucking software engineers and they can't handle an extra SKU on their multi-tier product line?

Nobody gets promotion for maintaining free SKU.

with verbose userbase.

I've posted this comment a few times in these threads. I'm in a same boat and did some digging with support and through the docs.

When you cancel workspace, the accounts remain active but lose access to just the workspace features (gmail, drive, docs, calendar etc). The accounts will remain the same for things like google play, youtube etc and you won't lose access to any purchases.

The biggest impact I can see, other than the headache of migration, is that former GFYD email address can NEVER be used for docs, drive etc, even on the same terms as a free personal account.

Looks like you can add "Cloud Identity Free" to keep using Drive and Documents. They give each user 15GB free.

https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/answer/7319251?hl=e...

For a new domain I had to signup to Cloud Identity Premium then cancel. For an existing domain on Google Apps, just remove Workspace and add Cloud Identity Free.

For a highly techy audience, you'd think people could have figured that out, but I guess outrage is better.

You don't have to lose access to anything except the core products - gmail, drive, docs, calendar. You still get to log on with your Google Account to access your purchases.

This is about people using G Suite legacy, not Workspace. You can't cancel Workspace if you don't have it.

The point is you will have it.

G-Suite Legacy gets converted to Workspace.

Once you stop paying for Workspace, you lose functionality (GMail, Drive etc.).

Nothing stops you from *still* using that account for purchases and moving your e-mail somewhere else.

How are you calculating $70 per family member?

"Plans start at $6 /user/month" - $6x12months = $72 per year.

Oh I see. I thought you were saying $70 per month.

I guess it's $70 per user per year?

>> Plans start at $6 /user/month

$6 * 12 = $72

use google takeout to take backup of your data asap.

Google Takeout is kind of a nightmare.

Fortunately I already went through the hassle of extracting my photos a while back. It was something like 45 downloads of 2GB zip files, with really chaotic organization of photos.

But I tried to do Google Takeout of just a few things, including Email (which is under 2GB usage) but not including photos. Somehow it still created 63 files, each 2GB in size. I just threw up my hands and gave up. I got my email using IMAP + Thunderbird, and I exported my contacts. The rest is going in the bin.

At least the history bit can be saved thanks to Google Takeout.

Putting everything into the hands of an enormous corporation and being surprised when they do things to benefit themselves. insert picture of shocked but not that shocked fry meme

That's not an excuse to actually be complete assholes.