Oof, this sucks. I'd forgotten about losing all Android purchases. That totally sucks. You still need to get out though, as it will only get worse. I personally migrated by downloading and uploading over imap.

IMO, this seems like a lawsuit territory. "Start paying us or we'll hold your purchases hostage".

> I understand you just lose all your Google Play purchases and need to re-purchase any apps or subscriptions you want to keep. I'm assuming this will basically require an Android phone factory reset and to be setup fresh with a "new" Google account for the old email address? Is this the case?

You understand wrong.

You do not lose access to your purchases. You will still have a Google Account (with your own custom domain), it's just that after the conversion from G-Suite Legacy to Workspace, if you stop paying it it will not allow you to access the "core" products (Gmail, Drive, Calendar, whatever).

Nothing stops you from moving your e-mail somewhere else but still keeping the Google Account with that domain.

I went through this last year. It was relatively smooth, but I did do a factory reset and spent a couple hours on the project just to be sure.

I have been plagued by account problems for years, though, having signed up for services like YouTube with a personal email prior to creating the same email address in Google Workspace. I recommend avoiding it, and just using a free Gmail account for basic usage of Google docs and YouTube and your phone.

Did you successfully go from having [email protected] as the primary Google account on your phone, with the account setup under Google Workspace, to an end state where you had a "new" Google account for the exact same email address with no connection to Google Workspace.

I understand it's a given to lose the purchases. I'm semi-dreading the prospect of being presented with an error message preventing the creation of a new Google Account for an email address previously under Google Workspace. This may be irrational...but it seems like a case where Murphy's Law would rear its ugly head, and typical of the "gotchas" that these legacy accounts have had to deal with when interacting with certain Google products.

And I guess the worst-case downside is that I might need to create a new Google Account with a different email address from my primary email address just for the phone and Google apps, which is awkward but isn't the end of the world.

Provided Google doesn't disable "too much" of these accounts, they ought to act like normal "Google accounts", which don't have Google-provided email service associated (i.e. a free Google account that was created with an external email address).

You might miss out on some things like Calendar/Gmail, but a free Google account using an external email should preserve things like purchases. Failing to do that would seem likely to push them down the path of lawsuits and PR fiascos, and also embolden what's likely a disproportionately tech-savvy (and influential in making purchasing decisions) audience fitting the demographic that set up a domain for email 10+ years ago.

I went through exactly this 6 months ago and am now signed in on Android with exactly the same email address as I had on my paid workspace account

though I advise leaving it for a week or so after deleting it as it was pretty glitchy to begin with