Google Legacy Gsuite no longer free.

[timbo343]

I saw this earlier today, might be a bit late but wondered if this means personal google accounts are no longer to be free and all those with personal google accounts will have to pay to use their apps, this includes email?

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2022/1/19/22891509/g-suite-legacy-free-google-apps-workspace-upgrade

[FN-GM]

Urgh! I have a free account that that I have used for way over 10 years. Ah well - Good while it lasted!

[Guest Guest]

Urgh! I have a free account that that I have used for way over 10 years. Ah well - Good while it lasted!

 

I think it’s just the legacy editions for business use etc so I doubt we’ll be charged for personal Google accounts.

[FN-GM]

I think it’s just the legacy editions for business use etc so I doubt we’ll be charged for personal Google accounts.

 

It’s not a gmail account I have. I have a full Google Workspace tenant that I don’t pay for. I think I could have upto 50 users. I use it for my custom domain name.

[IrritableTech]

It’s not a gmail account I have. I have a full Google Workspace tenant that I don’t pay for. I think I could have upto 50 users. I use it for my custom domain name.

 

Yeah me too, but they haven’t contacted me direct as yet. It’s going to be a little under a fiver per user per month.

 

You get twice as much storage (30gb) but it’s far more expensive than the google one storage tiers, and they are now counting google photos and docs against your quota.

[robk]

Not had any direct information from Google but sounds like it will hit my family accounts as well...

 

Do they allow just email only accounts I wonder.

[dmj]

I'd be interested to hear of other options edugeek members would recommend. Not entirely happy about financially rewarding Google for this move. I mostly just want domain email.

[Guest Guest]

I'd be interested to hear of other options edugeek members would recommend. Not entirely happy about financially rewarding Google for this move. I mostly just want domain email.

 

I mostly use office 365 and don’t really use Google. I found 365 cheaper than Google personally.

[FN-GM]

I mostly use office 365 and don’t really use Google. I found 365 cheaper than Google personally.

 

I guess it depends what you use. If you use drive with the word processing and sheets etc wouldn’t it cost more to get a Microsoft Office licence?

[chaplic]

Ive got a free 100 user workspace as I got in v. early.

 

I'm Literally now migrating my sons email from it now to office365, the MS business essentials is cheaper (and in my case actually cost neutral cos I was paying for a onedrive license for him which is the same price)

 

It's not clear what happens to the gmail account post the cutover date, obviously email etc will disappear but I haven't read anything that states if it will just turn into to free account.

 

After my pilot (son) is complete, got the in-laws and parents to migrate. Wish me luck!

[TwistedHelixis]

Just read an article, someone is creating a class action lawsuit to hit Google with about this.

[Ditto]

Just read an article, someone is creating a class action lawsuit to hit Google with about this.

Any more details/links on this? TBH, given the product the original product was dropped in 2012, they had kept it free for best part of a decade as a courtesy. Now, I'm not a fan of subscription software, but it's the way of things nowadays and as some have pointed out here, it's been a great deal for a long time, but you have the choice to go elsewhere. It'd be pretty surprising a class action could be successful, but perhaps it depends on the original contract. Even if it said something like 'free for ever', I would be surprised if there isn't a get out clause somewhere. However, I would guess the numbers that subscribed back then are so small, Google could absorb the costs and might decide it's not worth the expense of pursuing through the courts. In hindsight, wish I signed up then, even if I had to consider paying now!

 

*** Edit - https://workspace.google.com/terms/standard_terms.html suggests under section 3 they can cancel the original deal. However, it doesn't fully look like an original copy of the agreement give it uses the term 'Workspace' throughout. I'd like to see the original, but I expect it's water-tight ***

Edited January 23, 2022 by Ditto

[Koldov]

Anyone placing bets on how long it will be until 'Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals' is no longer free?

 

Asking for a friend...

Edited January 24, 2022 by Koldov

[chaplic]

Anyone placing bets on how long it will be until 'Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals' is no longer free?

 

Asking for a friend...

 

About 10 minutes after the Microsoft school offering is not free...

 

Son migrated from gmail to Office365. Mailbox move is similar to on prem to exchange but you cannot finish it because MS tries to setup the forwarder which isnt supported in the basic google apps service, so the approach seems to be to set it to sync but not complete. Setting up the permissions for O365 into Google was a bit of a faff too with out-of-date instructions.

I Had to write a transport rule to remove spam checking from forwarded as some senders with certain DMARC policies were going into spam in O365, son moaning a bit about UI and asking the question what'll happen to things like hhangouts, which I dunno.

Edited January 24, 2022 by chaplic

[Arthur]

www.androidpolice.com/google-gsuite-free-legacy-class-action-investigation

 

When we covered the original news of the legacy G Suite shutdown, it seemed unreasonable to us, because customers using those legacy accounts are unable to transfer purchases or things like grandfathered subscription discounts to new accounts. When we asked if moving purchases between accounts might be possible, a Google representative confirmed it wasn't:

 

"No, customers cannot move those subscriptions and purchases to a free Google Account. If a customer does not wish to upgrade, they will not be asked to forfeit their login credentials, and they will not lose access to other Google services, such as YouTube, Photos and Google Play, nor paid content, including YouTube and Play Store purchases. They will be able to continue to log into their Google services and third-party sites with Google credentials. If a customer does not upgrade, only core services in a customer’s Google Workspace subscription, such as Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Meet, will be suspended. In this state, users won’t be able to receive or send email, including authenticating password resets via email. Without access to Gmail in the suspended state, we recommend customers use a different email to send and receive email messages, including changing logins and authenticating new passwords."

 

That means years of purchases tied to Google Play — potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars of assets like movie and music purchases for a given customer, across thousands of affected customers — could be tied to broken accounts because of the transition. Google explicitly confirmed to us that was the case, though customers could elect to keep using their broken suspended account alongside a working one.

 

In essence, everyone that migrated to one of these accounts while they were still offered (from 2006 at least until 2012, so far as I can tell) will have to pay extra money to keep their existing purchases tied to a fully working account, and we think that's pretty ridiculous.

[fiendishlyclever]

I've got a 100 seat free account for my own domain, and I've set family members with their own hosted emails so we're waiting to see what happens. I've not received any official notification from Google and there is no message in my admin account...

 

As a matter of principle I'm happy to lose access to the Google account rather than paying for it (their classic bait and switch tactic) but will migrate out the email and calendar. I've spent the downtime during Zoom/teams meetings clearing out emails that I don't really need to keep so I have less than 2000 left so far (not bad for 15 years)

 

Lots of threads/discussion about alternatives on Reddit but it depends what you are using (for example I have two domains on my account)

 

iCloud+ and Outlook (M365 subscribers) seem to be the most popular destinations.

[dmj]

 

iCloud+ and Outlook (M365 subscribers) seem to be the most popular destinations.

 

I think we have a winner:

iCloud+ custom email domain for 0.79p per month with 50GB storage - the Microsoft looks like 6 times that at £59

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238

[paulkerton]

Its curious, in one thread I saw people lamenting that Google knew everything about you and your habits. In this thread, people are lamenting that they are taking away free access to a product that hasn't been available in 10 years.

Well, you can't really have it both ways. You either pay for a service and get the privacy you want, or you get it for free and Google gets the data it wants to create targeted advertising profiles.

 

 

I think we have a winner:

iCloud+ custom email domain for 0.79p per month with 50GB storage - the Microsoft looks like 6 times that at £59

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238

 

The reason iCloud+ is the cheapest service compared to Microsoft or Google is because it has the worst solution. Apple's spam filtering may as well not exist, and the less said about Keynote/Pages/Numbers the better really.

Edited January 26, 2022 by paulkerton

[southhamster]

Its curious, in one thread I saw people lamenting that Google knew everything about you and your habits. In this thread, people are lamenting that they are taking away free access to a product that hasn't been available in 10 years.

Well, you can't really have it both ways. You either pay for a service and get the privacy you want, or you get it for free and Google gets the data it wants to create targeted advertising profiles.

 

 

 

 

The reason iCloud+ is the cheapest service compared to Microsoft or Google is because it has the worst solution. Apple's spam filtering may as well not exist, and the less said about Keynote/Pages/Numbers the better really.

Yes. +1 that! Mrs SH uses icloud but not that much and the amount of obvious spam she gets is ncredible. I do find Google very good at catching rubbish; outlook online less so.

[dmj]

^ that's fine for me, sorry I didn't make it clear I was looking for a domain email relay that I didn't need to manage.

[JJonas]

Looks like good news

 

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-relents-legacy-g-suite-users-will-be-able-to-migrate-to-free-accounts/

[FN-GM]

Looks like good news

 

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-relents-legacy-g-suite-users-will-be-able-to-migrate-to-free-accounts/

 

So basically it will be a standard consumer Gmail account (with drive etc) but with a custom domain?

[dmj]

So basically it will be a standard consumer Gmail account (with drive etc) but with a custom domain?

Apparently not the custom domain

This new option won't include premium features like custom email or multi-account management.

 

So you just get to convert the account to a generic google account (with your purchases/ files) then use the 79p apple domain forwarding I guess.

[Brimstone]

Its curious, in one thread I saw people lamenting that Google knew everything about you and your habits. In this thread, people are lamenting that they are taking away free access to a product that hasn't been available in 10 years.

Well, you can't really have it both ways. You either pay for a service and get the privacy you want, or you get it for free and Google gets the data it wants to create targeted advertising profiles.

 

 

 

 

The reason iCloud+ is the cheapest service compared to Microsoft or Google is because it has the worst solution. Apple's spam filtering may as well not exist, and the less said about Keynote/Pages/Numbers the better really.

I've had an iCloud account for absolute donkeys and never get any spam, may be you need to check how yours is configured?

 

As for Pages, Keynote and Numbers, there are hundreds of schools and thousands of end users successfully using these fantastic fully featured free apps. Keynote in particular has more far transitions and effects plus the ability to trace objects and create animations, inside a Keynote presentation I can create present a live screen. In Pages on the iPad I can add audio recordings and video, draw and create object animations.

 

So the less said about the free alone version of Google Slides (without subscription to expensive plug ins) the better.

[hallb15]

I received this email from the Google Workspace Team last night

 

The Google Workspace Team

Thu, 27 Jan, 23:24 (14 hours ago)

to me

 

Google Workspace logo

Dear Administrator,

 

We are writing to let you know that your G Suite legacy free edition will no longer be available starting July 1, 2022. To maintain your services and accounts, you need to upgrade to Google Workspace.

 

We launched our G Suite legacy free edition —the original Google Apps offering for businesses and schools— 16 years ago. In 2012 we discontinued this service, and we will now transition all remaining users to an upgraded Google Workspace paid subscription based on your usage.

 

What does this mean for my organization?

In 2020, we introduced —Google Workspace— and tailored our offerings to provide more options to fit our customers’ needs. Google Workspace includes all the features you already use, plus several new capabilities including more storage, increased security, 24/7 support, and more.

 

Upgrading from your G Suite legacy free edition to Google Workspace will only take you a few short steps and is not disruptive to your end-users. To support you in this transition, you will have discount options for 12 months after July 1, 2022.

 

What do I need to do?

To avoid disruption and maintain your account(s), please upgrade to Google Workspace by May 1, 2022. Begin the upgrade by reviewing the transition help center article, and selecting the option that best suits your organization’s needs. When you've identified your preferred subscription:

 

Go to your Admin console.

Select your new subscription offering.

Enter your billing information.

Once you’re upgraded, you can use your new Google Workspace subscription and functionality at no-cost until at least July 1, 2022.

 

If you take no action by May 1, 2022, Google will begin upgrading your organization seamlessly to a new Google Workspace subscription. The new subscription will be based on what you currently use with your G Suite legacy free edition.

 

If you do not enter your billing details before July 1, 2022, your subscription will be suspended.

 

If your needs have changed and you do not want to upgrade to a Google Workspace subscription, you can export your organization’s data with the takeout feature.

 

FAQs

Visit the help center for information on the G Suite legacy free edition to Google Workspace transition.

 

We’re here to help

If you have questions or need assistance, please Contact Google Workspace support. When you call or submit your support case, reference issue number 205265775. If you have trouble accessing your administrator account, please refer to instructions to reset your administrator password.

 

Thanks for choosing Google Workspace.

 

– The Google Workspace Team

 

© 2022 Google LLC 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043

 

You have received this important update about your Google Workspace account because you designated this email address as a primary or secondary contact for mandatory service communications in your Google Admin console profile.