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Comment by Rebelgecko | Hacker News Reader

(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.

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"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.

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