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Comment by theossuary | Hacker News Reader

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'm really considering moving over to them. But I have no idea what the migration of a decade of email across 5 inboxes will look like; not to mention Calendar and contacts. I used this as my primary email on at least 7 android phones (the original Pixel up through the Pixel 6 I preordered). The loss of Youtube purchases; android play purchases, etc. is going to hurt. I'm sad it isn't illegal to turn a free account into a paid one when it means losing purchased content like this.

I'm not 100% sure what to do, I don't have dozens of hours to walk everyone through a migration; and Google provides absolutely no migration tools to help with this. This is the last time I'll be burned by Google though. I used to be a huge fan; but at this point I'm done. I'm really looking forward to cutting them out completely. As an added bonus; I no longer have to worry about them deciding to ban my account one day and lose everything.

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You're complaining that a service you use all the time for a decade for free now might cost the equivalent of a cup of coffee per month?

I'm all about Google being evil and all that, but spending valuable aggression on this seems a bit excessive..

The Google Takeout system gives you all of your email in a format you might be able to import into another system?

> The loss of Youtube purchases; android play purchases, etc. is going to hurt

It's basically blackmail: pay the new monthly fee which you didn't agree to when you signed up, or lose access to everything you've already paid for.

"paid for"?

The paid Android apps, YouTube purchases, etc which the parent commenter bought using his account. If it was just email hosting (the GSuite service itself), it wouldn't be such a big deal.

I misunderstood. Thank you for the clarification.

I mean, I’m annoyed sure but I’ve gotten over a decade of free service. When I saw the announcement for a half second considered setting up an email server again then remembered what a massive pain in the ass that use to be and just going to pay the fee

I'm getting precisely one value added service over a regular google account - a custom domain.

I dont need any of the other workspace related frippery, I don't want it, it makes some of the features of the account harder to use - it was better before it had the notion of an organization even.

I just want to be able to create some gmail accounts under my domain, I'm not a business, I'm a guy who handed out email accounts to his friends, now I gotta figure out if any of them are using them still.

Same here, its the domain I care about. Its my fiancees last name in our countries TLD. Here name is really short and nice, so it has been awesome. This is a bummer, since her sister and fiancee are also using it. Thank god I have not been using it for more than an email alias, and the kids too.

Same thing here. Within the past two years I started a transition to a regular Google Account b/c GApps Free was a second class citizen (no family groups, etc.)

Killing the free tier now is a huge PITA, and especially aggravating without them implementing any way to carry over licenses to a regular google account which is still free.

That's one reason why I have tried to only buy things on my personal Gmail account (@gmail.com), a few times I forgot and bought things on my private domain.

This is very troublesome... It is possible to create a general, personal Google account using any email address (iirc) so I wonder if it is possible to just migrate to your own email solution (since you own the domain) and keep the google account, or at least migrate it to a regular account.

It appears this is not possible. I don’t need any of the G Suite features, and I don’t even need email. I just need my single user inside G Suite to be converted to a normal unmanaged Google account but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do that.

Some people are saying if you convert your account to Google workspace then cancel that then you end up with what you want. You'd keep Photos and YouTube but no Gmail, contacts, calendar etc. I'm trying to discover if this is true.

I would still need Docs, which is “core”.

I don't really understand. Why, when leaving G suite and going back to a normal account, would you not have access to stuff like Docs, Gmail etc? It's like you're being punished, rather than simply not having extra features.

FYI this doesn't actually seem to be the case... quoting from my other comment in a different thread:

Over the last week I've gone through all of the steps of registering a new domain, setting it up with Google Workspace, sharing some docs back and forth, deleting the entire organization, and then signing up for a new google account using the same email address (so no gmail). After each step I waited 24 hours.

I was able to access Docs and share back and forth using this reused address on the new account. You'll obviously lose all of the existing share connections, but it's not like the address itself is burned.

> You're complaining that a service you use all the time for a decade for free now might cost the equivalent of a cup of coffee per month?

It’s easy to paint customers as frightful moaners, but that’s a surefire way to lose customers, or at least alienate them. Google’s Reader debacle comes to mind.

In particular, the short notice period (3 months + 2 months grace) for something people have been using for a decade is jarring.

And these were the earliest customers of Google Apps for your Domain, and created a lot of positive word of mouth publicity for Google.

Ultimately, it’s not about right and wrong, it’s about how you make customers feel, and Google institutionally doesn’t know how to make ordinary customers feel great when things go wrong. It’s an institutional issue. (Exception: if you’ve got enterprise support for GCP. Then you get a lot of engagement.)

By the same token, people have been using free Gmail accounts for a while now. What do you think the perception will be if Google asked them to pony up $60 a year with 5 months’ notice?

> In particular, the short notice period (3 months + 2 months grace) for something people have been using for a decade is jarring.

For me, this raises the obvious question. How long a notice period is long enough? Six months? Eight? A year? Five years? A decade?

I think we can all agree that a decade would be an excessive and unreasonable expectation.

> By the same token, people have been using free Gmail accounts for a while now. What do you think the perception will be if Google asked them to pony up $60 a year with 5 months’ notice?

Probably about the same as if Google asked them to pony up $60 a year with a year's notice. Which is to say incredibly hostile because people have come to view free Gmail accounts as a basic public service for which no payment will ever be required under any circumstances.

How long a notice period is long enough?

Looking at it another way, Google's most recent net profit is $18.94 billion per quarter.

I have no idea but if there are 1 million G Suite Legacy accounts out there at $60 per year. That would increase their revenue $60 million per year.

So just assume all that revenue is net profit which would make their quarterly net profit go from $18.94 billion to $18.955 billion for the low cost of pissing off 1 million people.

You never get to the point of making $19 billion a quarter if you aren't constantly looking for ways to optimize pricing and make a little more money. And at the individual level, $60 million is $60 million. What percentage of the bottom line it is is much less relevant than what percentage of your team's top line revenue it is and how it impacts your ability to get a bonus, increase headcount, get a promotion, etc.

The PR backlash costs worth way more than what this would have saved.

Their main customer base (by orders of magnitude) are advertisers. I'm not convinced that this move will change anything at all in those relationships.

I, myself, am a 'victim' of this, with two personal accounts grandfathered in from the good ol' days. I'm moving both of them to Protonmail.

> Which is to say incredibly hostile because people have come to view free Gmail accounts as a basic public service for which no payment will ever be required under any circumstances.

which is called entitlement. And i'm seeing more and more of this sense of entitlement as more and more people (esp. young people) being exposed to the internet - and this seeps into their other lives offline.

You do know they make money from you using Google Gmail because they serve ads. And you're probably logged in while you're searching and using other Google services so they know who you are and your history & they can show you better ads. Google actually does make money. If everyone is not logged in when they're using Google, Google will be less able to serve relevant ads and make less money.

Google has shown such "entitlement" on many occasions. Take, for one example, their idea that they are entitled to not pay Sonos for their technology which just came back to bite them. Of course it was Google's customers who ended up getting the short end of the stick.

> their idea that they are entitled to not pay Sonos for their technology

Might want to research that one. Sonos “technology” here is the idea that multiple speakers can be adjusted by one knob… but the knob happens to be software.

It is a bit more than that.

https://techstory.in/google-found-to-have-violated-sonos-pat...

You're right. There are 5 garbage patents instead of one.

> 9195258: System and method for synchronizing operations among a multiplicity of digital data processing devices that are separately clocked

I am struggling to see merit. It reads like "devices can play music in sync if you send them the timing info" which is not novel. Maybe I'm missing something, but I am doubtful. The patent system is full of garbage and patents are written to be obtuse on purpose.

> 10209953: Playback device

The abstract is literally identical to the previous patent word for word. I don't think this should at all be considered a separate patent. Partly because the claims seem like garbage, but mostly because it's just more of the same from the first. This is written to be almost impossible to parse, but the first claim in English is "two devices on a LAN can connect and coordinate playback based on one device's clock". It's NTP. Sorry, it's "NTP, plus audio".

> 8588949: Method and apparatus for adjusting volume levels in a multi-zone system

One knob, multiple speakers. Old idea. Every smart home app has exactly this same concept for lights and speaker systems have done this for decades without the software. It is not novel.

> 9219959: Multi-channel pairing in a media system

Jesus Christ. "You can use multiple speakers to play multiple audio channels." It is not novel that your speakers can be "smart".

> 10439896: Playback device connection

Ugh. "You can use your phone to add a device."

None of this stuff is novel. The last one seems the most novel, but also not valid because it essentially describes part of the WPS protocol, but using an app instead of a router button.

I don't see that it's "entitlement" to think these are garbage. The software industry giants have fought a long time for the patent office to acknowledge software patents that are not actually novel. I honestly hope this crap starts to hurt them more and maybe they'll start pushing for reform. But probably not because the primary effect is to harm smaller competitors.

It is not free. Google collects personal information for advertising purposes.

Let's not forget that Google's spam filtering racket has made it next to impossible to host your own email in any kind of practical manner, or even use many hosted email services effectively over the years.

This. I hosted my own email for over 15 years, and last year was the year I gave up. There was nothing wrong with my machine's IP, I was doing the right thing email server wise, but Gmail still didn't let me deliver. A racket is a good way of describing it.

We've got to flip the narrative on this. Google deliverability is poor, users should switch providers if they'd like to get their messages.

users are never going to switch because by-definition-minor-mailers cant reach them

Users may not switch (right away) but how we as a community talk about this problem can switch. This will ultimately help the problem get fixed when perceptions shift, either within Google or by new users evaluating other options given Google’s reputation of poor deliverability/interoperability.

Also I suspect a lot of Google’s early adopters will be switching away due to this change. These are the tech-savvy evangelists who helped build Google Apps to what it is, and can plausibly do it for another service too.

Absolutely. I set up my own domain last year, hoping to run a mailserver directly off it. The whole thing was perfectly configured, but the 'some dude' IP address made it unusable. Eventually I moved the domain's hosting to Fastmail, and now the mail actually arrives.

I don't think so and I'm not a fan of the "(esp. young people)" notion.

Since I can remember email services across Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have been free. It is completely okay for us to expect that to continue as it has been around for so long. Now if you want perhaps more premium features, or access to the entire suite of product then yes it is expected you would need to pay.

Let's not act like providing users with free email hasn't been beneficial for these companies either.

We used to get email from ISPs. ISPs weren't free.

You still can get your email from ISP's, but I don't know why you would. In my experience ISP based email is average.

But Hotmail and Yahoo for example have been around since the mid 90's. That's 27 years of free email.

Google created and offered the service for free, ie. they created the sense of entitlement themselves.

As such, they have no justifiable reason not to expect user reactions reeking of entitlement.

That they did. Per Google's press release for Google Apps:

>Furthermore, organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided Google continues to offer the service).

http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-host...

I signed up for my account 1 year after that... 15 years I have been on that account, 5 years I have been saying I need to de-google my life... 2022 Google gave me the shove in the ass I needed to pull that trigger...

Thanks Google, finally I have the motivation to end my relationship with you

I'm also in the same situation, I opted only because they offered it for free "Organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period. "

I have to agree on this.

Google should not set the wrong expectation right from the start. At that point in time, the impression I got is Google App is just a typical Gmail account with the additional feature of using custom domain with some administrative features.

And with what Google is doing today to Google Apps (now packaged as G Suite legacy free), there is nothing stopping Google from doing the same thing to the typical Gmail accounts as well.

Imagine you have been using your whatever@gmail.com for everything and is deeply integrated in you life. One fine day, Google bite back and also say you have to start paying to use whatever@gmail.com, how does it sound? We don't own the gmail.com domain and we will be held ransom to stay or lose the email address if we don't want to pay.

So are we also wrong to have the expectation of entitlement that the normal Gmail account will be forever free to us (i.e. provided Google is still around)?

You shouldn’t get to play the ‘get off my lawn’ card without disclosing your age.

> which is called entitlement.

Or you can call it bait and switch by the company.

Who said the notice period should be an entire decade? Or even five years?

They're arguing against the (IMO ridiculous) assertion that 5 months is "short notice." Everyone here agrees an hour's notice would be far too short. Everyone here agrees a decade or five years is too long. So where is the line?

It doesn't mean anyone suggested it should be any of those lengths.

It may take me two months just to figure out how to migrate my services someplace else. I'm hosting 10 accounts worth of email.

I'd say that a year or a year + 3 months is a reasonable transition period.

People need to assess the situation, evaluate existing solutions (including paying for the service), what needs to be done, etc. They're not doing it as their job, so do not necessarily know the current market offers.

Then they need to allocate time and resources to do the transition. Time, when the transition is the least disruptive, and the resources are usually availability if an in-house specialist. I know plenty of companies where upgrading a software take more than a year, with all their budgets, IT departments and external contractors. A typical G Suite user won't have all that expertise readily available.

That means that the transition will often require an IT enthusiast working in their free time. It's reasonable to assume that they will have at least one vacation per year to do that. So if the transition is ≥ 12 month, everyone and their mom should be able to do it.

If the transition is 3-5 months, I can see how it can be a problem even for commercial users with a dedicated task force.

I moved from Gmail to Fastmail recently, because Google Sites forced me to move from V1 to V2. However, in their defense, they gave me over a year's notice to convert my site and I still didn't do it. They made it read-only after a year, which is what pushed me into trying the migration. It was a disaster: the Google V2 site was slow (my release notes page took 15 seconds to load but used to load in a couple seconds) and the site looked like crap. So I had to do Takeout and hand-edit Google's 512KB-per-page of Javascript and HTML. But now, pages average 19KB each, the site looks great, and it's way easier to manage with Asciidoc instead of using a browser editing window.

My point: it doesn't matter how long they give us to switch - most people won't do it until they are absolutely forced.

This reminds me of Microsoft back in the day. Windows was (is?) crap, unreliable, and without the kindness of technical friends and relatives willing to work on someone's Windows issues for free, Microsoft may not have ever made it past DOS. I got sick of working on everyone's Windows problems so got rid of all my Windows machines and just told people "sorry, I don't have any Windows machines anymore and can't help you". And it was the truth - after about a year I really didn't know how to help them anymore! It's great!

Maybe it's time for technical people to stop working for free for Microsoft and Google. If their stuff is crap, let them sort it out with their wonderful customer service that you now have to pay for.

A reasonable standard is one month for every year of use, especially for those of us who are not businesses.

It's not 60 bucks a year for most of us, it's whatever the domain costs plus $6 per account times the number of accounts. In my case it's 720 dollars a year, which is more than it is worth.

Actually, I think that the "right move" should be quite different: DONT STOP a service with a short deadline but DEGRADATE it with a long deadline.

If you STOP a service (or turn it to a PAID service) on short notice - and a service that is essential to people - then people will have to rush to find a solution... and will feel been extorted.

If you DEGRADATE the service more and more, people will slowly leave or upgrade to PAID, but they will have the choice.

Moreover, email is really a sensitive matter: it's a main point of contact for... well... email... but altogether for online service (IRS, website account, etc.) and in a way our digital life. So you can't just leave such a short notice. However, you have to let your FREE customer know that they have a choice to make quickly... so DEGRADATION is a good tradeoff I think

They have been trying that for awhile, legacy accounts have not been getting some of the new feature, space was more limited on the legacy accounts than the paid accounts, and a few other things.

Most of us however we perfectly fine with the limited on the accounts... in reality if they just gave me the exact same level of service as they do the free gmail but with a custom domain I would be fine / happy. That is after all what the original service I signed up for was in the beginning.

I have no interest in Google Workspace, I want Gmail, Drive, and Identity. That is it. Maybe Photos... All of which they offer free to everyone still today just not with a custom domain

Same here. I honestly don't need the custom domain email stuff (I can move that to another provider). Just give me an option to turn my account into a regular @gmail.com account with working email/calendar/meet like everybody else paying $0, and I'll be happy. I'm just not a fan of being left with a crippled account even compared to their free service if I want to keep my existing stuff outside of email.

I'm thinking of doing something similar, basically:

1. cancelling my Legacy Free Edition

2. moving my domain to another provider (e.g. Proton Mail, Fastmail, etc.)

3. creating a personal Gmail account using one of the email address that will be formerly part of my Legacy Free Edition

I have some hesitance that the Google account creation flow won't allow me to do this.

Five months is not short notice, full stop. Even three months I would have a hard time thinking of any reasonable argument. The length of time you've used a service is irrelevant, the question is how much of a lift is it to switch, and nothing on Google Apps would take you anywhere near 90 days to switch out of. I pay something like $65 or $70/yr for O365 Outlook for a personal domain email, and the email is the only thing I get with that, so this is on the cheaper end to boot. I'm sure you can find custom email domain handling for less though.

> What do you think the perception will be if Google asked them to pony up $60 a year [for Gmail] with 5 months’ notice?

Realistically, I and a lot of other people would think "remind me in 4 months and ~25 days so I can put my credit card in." But it's also not a valid comparison because in Gmail you're the product via advertising. Not the case for Apps.

I found out because I saw it on HN, this page was posted on googles side, last month.

How many people have not even been told yet?

I'd be happy to pay them 120 bucks a year for what I'm getting now, 10 email accounts, of which, one sees actual use.

Same here. Question for anyone that knows: do I have to pay to keep my gmail account that I only use to manage my GCP services? (Auth)

> I'd be happy to pay them 120 bucks a year for what I'm getting now

The only reason I'm still using it is because account bound purchases are attached to it, otherwise it would have been long gone. As long as there is no way of transferring these anywhere google will not get a single cent.

For those of us who have other things to do than migrate email, 5 months is super short. Also, I just found out from this post (ironically the mail they sent me about it went to the low priority box).

Luckily I just use it for domain forwarding, so it won't be a huge issue, but I do have some accounts tied to the gmail auth, and untangling that mess will be hard.

How really can you tell me how many project migration project that involve changing a whole basic infrastructure is done in less than 5 months from idea to completion in your company? For a personal project where you may not have a lot of time to invest in this is quite short.

Back when I was using Apple I paid for an @mac.com address. I could get used to paying for email again, though I may be in the minority there. Although being a paid product didn't stop Apple from killing it.

I don't mind paying for e-mail personally. There's a lot of odds and ends stuff you have to deal with operationally if you self-host, and most of the places that charge you don't display ads.

> Although being a paid product didn't stop Apple from killing it.

Email to whoever@mac.com is still working as far as I know, and I send emails to a couple of people who still use mac.com addresses all the time (whoever@icloud.com also works).

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201771

Also @me.com. Apple have some sick domains!

This was the .Mac subscription. Poking around the history, it looks like I misunderstood Apple's move at the time. When they discontinued .Mac they also seem to have switched to the me.com domain. My impression at the time from whatever messaging they sent out to subscribers was "no more mac.com email" so that's when I switched to Gmail.

> It’s easy to paint customers as frightful moaners, but that’s a surefire way to lose customers, or at least alienate them. Google’s Reader debacle comes to mind.

Years later and I still don't use Google (except for search and sometimes maps) because of Reader.

Isn’t search the most important part of Google? And in a way, everything they do is usually to get you to use Google Search (Chrome, Android, etc).

The problem with this argument is that for many (including myself), we just wanted to use Gmail and other Google services with our own domains. That was free and worked perfectly for everything Google offered at the time.

Now, they are asking for more money (It was $6/mo; it's now $12/mo) for less features that apply to us (can't use YouTube Premium or Google Homes on a family plan if you have G-suite, can't port a Voice number from a consumer account into a G-Suite account, amongst other limitations) because Google decided to convert this offering into their business collaboration portfolio instead of leaving it as its own thing.

Worse, if you want to move all of your email, photos, Google Maps activity, etc. to a free account, well, too bad! You can't! You can use takeout.google.com to download everything, but most of that data can't be imported into consumer.

Basically, we were duped, and now our data is trapped.

Personally, I would be happy if Google offered a way to convert legacy accounts into Google Consumer accounts like flipping a switch. Shit, I'd even pay a few bucks/month still for exactly this experience without all of the Google Workspace-y stuff that I never use. (I never use Google Chat, Google Meet, or any of their business-only offerings _because I never wanted those things in the first place!_)

Someone not paying, using the free tier is by definition not a "customer". At least not yet, they are a potential customer at best.

Google makes a hell of a lot of money from me and people like me by selling ads based on multiple aspects of our lives. Spare me the "I'm not a customer" BS.

They make a bunch of money off you, but they don't receive that money from you. The customer is the one you receive money from.

"You're not a customer" isn't BS, it's a fact. Time to realise: You (and I) are the product.

I host 7 emails right now, it'd cost $500/year for email moving forward.

I'd be happy to convert accounts to personal Gmail accounts and do mail forwarding. I'd be happy to move to a family plan for $100/year.

After being a user for a decade, you'd think Google would provide me a reasonable way to pay them for their services. But I can't swing $500/year for email.

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.

Protonmail's cheap too. Less than $50 annually for all that I use, including multi-user VPN.

I've heard good things about Fastmail too, of you're looking for an alternative.

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.

I started migrating to Migadu last night after seeing this post. I have 5 domains and a few users and it should cost me $20 a year once their trial expires.

Microsoft has a Gmail migration tool. not sure if MS is cheaper, but it is stupid easy and fast to migrate from Gmail/gsuite to o365. just plug in credentials and hit run.

I've moved small businesses on gsuite free, multiple personal gmails over using their tool, and I have not had an issue in the dozen or so corps I moved

Doesn't that only work on the business plans? (Not the family plans that are 6 users for $99/yr)

ZOHO mail works for me. The entry level premium account is €0.9/user/month. Free tier is reasonable too (up to 5 users). I find their web UI a bit overloaded with features, but they have all check boxes crossed.

The email service that Google provides for free solely to data-mine / profile you and be assured they always know your IP addresses/browsers so they can better track you, and so on?

And they will be doing the same thing when getting paid.

It would be nice if the system worked but it isn't currently for me. It says I have to have 2 factor enable which I have had enabled for a long time.

> You're complaining that a service you use all the time for a decade for free now might cost the equivalent of a cup of coffee per month?

People always complain about bait and switch tactics.

Give them a way to revert to a free personal account without losing access to their files, data, and any digital goods they may have purchased and let them decide if they want to covert to a paid account or not.

You can always use Google Takeout so you don't lose access to your files.

You can always use Google Takeout so you don't lose access to your files.

Does Google Takeout allow you to download de-DRMed media you've paid for through Google properties? Provide functional APKs of paid Android apps that will continue working without an active and functional Google account?

How do I migrate my domains purchased under my google workspace account?

Those should be pretty easy, provided you do it now. Domain transfers are straightforward with any provider. I moved mine to Namecheap a few years ago.

unfortunately, that isn't reliable. hwwn the ended google play, I lost TBs of music because Google takeout didn't work, and there isn't a sole at Google I can contact to get support for it.

That's not a substitute for not allowing people to choose between a free account and a paid account.

Takeout is "fine" for core services (Gmail, Calendar, Contacts) but unusable for anything involving activities and events. Examples:

- Google Maps search history, custom maps, stars

- Google Photos albums, comments, activity

- Google Search activity

- YouTube stuff, of any kind (unless you use something like Soundiiz, but even then it's nothing like Google Play Music was where your files were YOUR FILES, and somethings aren't available on the streaming platforms)

The account that locked them into Google for a decade? Yes. No competitor could begin to attempt to sell a new service against free. Now the social contract is switching after all the baiting and it’s money time.

It’s typical in SaaS to grandfather in old accounts. You take the hit because your later client base is so much bigger, and why not keep your early adopters sweet. Google has calculated the value of those early adopters and decided it’s worth it. Wait until customers have too much to lose and then yank the fishing line. “You call them early adopters? We call them freeloaders.”

This is why I use an iPhone. I pay the money and I get to keep (mostly) my data. Google, you give away your data and pay nothing. Now you give data and you pay? Ick. If Apple starts giving away my data I’d be equally pissed.

Takeout is a terriffic service, but not a great way of doing this. It will actually create additional work. When you set up the new microsoft account you can simply migrate all calendars, contacts and mail as part of the setup. [1]

A lot of people are talking about entitlement and saying how people shouldn't complain when free stuff goes away. I think those people are missing the point. Google is an incredibly profitable company and it would cost them almost nothing to continue to offer this service. By choosing not to, they piss people off (rightly or wrongly) and won't make much of anything in return. We can speculate about how they got to a place where maintaining this service was painful enough to justify doing that, but from the outside it seems like a poor decision that is hostile to users and antithetical to how they used to do things. That plays into the narrative that this ain't your mamma's google any more and something cool about the 2000s spirit has passed away.

[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/import-gmail-to-o...

Yes. Because non-free is infinitely more than free.

Imagine nothing changes, but now your wife demands you pay her cost of cup of coffee every time you have sex. Does that eff you up a little bit or do you barely notice?

Um, depending on where you live, wouldn't that create some legal headache?

It's a minimum of $6/m per inbox so if you have just 10 emails it's $720/year. That's not a small chunk of change if you're just using the email feature.

No. People are pissed off because this is a clear example of bait and switch. Google advertised this as Free forever. Forever isn't a decade.

If they had instead marketed it as 'free for a decade and then you'll pay some arbitrary amount' what do you think the adoption would have been?

I'm in a different boat than OP so maybe I can also provide a different perspective. I have a half-dozen legacy free G Suite accounts that I set up way back in the day. One was sort of a "junk email" domain that I used for logins on sites I registered for to try out and whatnot. Another was for my main personal domain. Another was for a family domain. A couple others were projects that then got retired. Now I'm down to two personal Google Workspace accounts and I probably will pay for one of them, while closing the other.

But the biggest issue for me right now is the club I run, which has nearly 30 accounts on our Google Workspace domain. The only reason I did this, way back when, was because of the promise of "free forever."

While we have about 30 people on Google Workspace, we have another 70 or so "non-staff" members. Our entire group of about 100 fundraises for our website costs every year, which are considerable for an all-volunteer group ($2000-ish) because we have a pretty resource intensive MediaWiki installation, and other resources.

We've spent 10 years integrating with Google. All of our other resources use Google login. Our group has dozens of Google Groups used for sub-committees. We use Google Drive/Docs excessively. And so on.

But there's no way we can afford to DOUBLE our costs just for Google Workspace. And we can't get a non-profit discount because we're not a charitable organization – we're just a club of writers.

So for us, this is a huge nuisance because not only is Google breaking the agreement it made with us ("FREE FOREVER"), but I don't have the time or resources to manage this kind of transition to something else. And... what, even? If we had known from the beginning they'd break their promise of being free forever, I just wouldn't have built so much infrastructure on top of this system.

You see how things change in perspective depending where you are in the world. Google cost would be nowhere near a coffee per month. If I consider my family, the 4 of us, the cost would be equivalent to going 1 extra week per month to the supermarket. Per year terms? It would be like saving the money to spend a weekend at the beach at a nice hotel once a year. I want that money for me!

Edit: I'm in Brazil BTW.

Think about it this way:

Google: "Come enjoy this limited version of our service, it's absolutely free!"

Consumer: "Excellent. I was going to go with this other service, but since this one is free I will take advantage of it!"

Years later...

Google: "Ok, now that you have many years of data in our system, it's time for you to start paying!"

Consumer: "Wait... what?"

Yes, it's been free. But Google offered it for free and now people have years of data in it. Data which could have been in another service had Google not offered this one for free to begin with. It's kind of like a bait and switch. Get people in, get them to sink most of their life into it, and then start charging.

Also, it's not like a lot of people were out looking for this kind of solution. The fact that it was free brought in a LOT of people who otherwise wouldn't have done it, and are now tied down to it.

That's why a lot of people are mad, and to me it is justifiable.

Something I just discovered is that Office 365 Family only lets you use custom domains if they are hosted by GoDaddy. If you want to use another domain registrar you have to get Microsoft 365 Business, which has a similar price as Google Workspace :(

There's no way I'm moving my domain to GoDaddy.

There are reddit posts showing how to bypass the Godaddy requirement. I used them to setup Office 365 for my family.

I have since moved the family emails to icloud mail since we already pay for icloud+ and I get multiple domain support, and aliases.

Those Reddit posts are two years old.

I have considered moving to iCloud as well. How do you find the UX? It has been a decade+ since I used the Mail app but I don’t have fond memories.

I find it cumbersome. I have a custom domain on iCloud and it's terrible for checking the mail from web browser (which I need to do whilst at work).

Not only that. the 2FA requirement is particularly bad. You cannot use 2FA apps (such as authenticator.cc / bitwarden / 1password); the requirement is having an apple device that you have physically signed in on before to be able to allow you to log in. Every single time. Even if you save the cookies.

I absolutely hate Google and Apple’s 2FA of verifying with a diff device. So annoying.

I don’t need to check mail by web browser though. So maybe I’ll do it.

If I was starting off afresh I certainly wouldn't do that.

All it takes is for some partnership manager who deals with the GoDaddy rep to get enough pressure put on them about this for the workarounds to become impossible within a few weeks.

And unlike most other things, this being unofficial, there need not even be an announcement with a few weeks to months of transition time. You'll just wake up overnight and it's not working.

While purely anecdotal, mine's been working for over two years using a .tl tld.

Interesting. I didn't realise Apple supported multiple domains. That must have happened after I moved away. I actually went the other way from Apple to Microsoft. I run a Linux laptop and iPhone, and the kids run all Apple kit. I've found the Linux support for MS better than for Apple (Evolution for email and calendar; OneDrive for live home directory sync across devices; and I use Firefox for password synchronisation). I tried to find a way to use iCloud storage for file sync with Linux but found nothing.

>> aliases

Can you wildcard aliases with your domain?

Looks like only one domain can be connected on this

It's a dollar cheaper AND you get the full suite of Office applications to use please more space (1TB). O365 Business Basic is a better deal.

Just use iCloud. It allows you to setup custom domains no worries and give emails to everyone who’s included into your family plan. I’ve got two custom domains setup that I share with my wife.

Alternatively you can use Fastmail but I recentely moved from it to iCloud for consolidation purposes. Don’t get me wrong, Fastmail is absolutely awesome and I had great experience, I just wanted to consolidate.

Don't have any apple devices, not sure if i even can.

For you it is Fastmail then, they are awesome and integrate with 1Password for an-email-per-service thing (known as Hide My Email in Apple's world)

> Microsoft's Family offering is way better

Well, it's called Google _Workspace_ now and their cheapest offering is _Business_ Starter at $6/user/month, and their "Individual" offering is $9.99/month (currently on sale for $7.99/month).

I guess Google is making the service business-oriented. For you, that means you need to consider whether or not the service will add value to your _business_ before buying them. It's not a family service.

Little rant here: to be completely honest, I don't really understand what Google has been doing in the past decade. As a search engine company, the clerk of the Internet if you will, you'd imagine that they would do anything in their power to create and maintain a vibrant Internet. Things like encouraging custom domain usage, lowering hosting costs etc should be naturally on bucket list. But instead of doing that, they became one of the company who focused on sipping on their user, all the while the Internet is more and more concentrated and hard to search. Well played ...

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).

I have a number of users at user1/user2/etc@mydomain.com on G Suite. If I started to use Fastmail, could they all continue to use their existing email addresses at Fastmail to send/receive mail, access their historical emails (if I copy those across) etc using whatever client? And second question: if after this G Suite shutdown in May (or whenever) Gmail is stopped for these users they can presumably still link Fastmail to Gmail? Or would they have to use some other email client? Would they each get their own credentials for logging in or would I have to trust them with my "main" Fastmail credentials? I've never used another email provider before.

(I'm not affiliated with Fastmail, just a user of their services. Please do research to double-check stuff.)

> I have a number of users at user1/user2/etc@mydomain.com on G Suite. If I started to use Fastmail, could they all continue to use their existing email addresses at Fastmail to send/receive mail, access their historical emails (if I copy those across) etc using whatever client?

Fastmail supports multiple users per domain (and multiple domains btw). For those users it should only need the client updating with details of Fastmail's servers instead of Google's. Then it should work the same.

> And second question: if after this G Suite shutdown in May (or whenever) Gmail is stopped for these users they can presumably still link Fastmail to Gmail? Or would they have to use some other email client?

You'd not be using the GMail app at that point. You would either be using Fastmail's own app or a third party client such as the Outlook app (which is actually very good, only moderately tied to MS, and works with other email providers).

If your users are using GMail on the web they'd switch to the Fastmail site instead and, personally, I think that wipes the floor with the mess that GMail has become.

> Would they each get their own credentials for logging in or would I have to trust them with my "main" Fastmail credentials? I've never used another email provider before.

From Fastmail's user configuration screen: "Each user has their own inbox and login".

---

Whatever and whoever you choose, try it first whilst you've still got time. Pick up a really cheap domain name (a random one as it is a throwaway for testing) and start a trial account. Configure a few users, set up the app, and try it out.

Transferring emails is quick with Fastmail, but I wouldn't do that for any kind of test as it is very easy to get a setting wrong and move them from GMail instead of copy them, which makes your trial somewhat more permanent unless you move them back.

Thanks, but Fastmail is $5 per user per month if you want to use your own domain. Not much less than Google's $6 per user per month. I'm going to want between 2 and 4 users, but they're not heavy users and I just know I'm going to be wondering why I'm bothering to pay when I could just create another google account, have access to docs/calendar/drive/etc which I'm apparently not going to have access to even if I am successful in doing the "update to workspace/don't pay for workspace/cancel workspace/keep the workspace accounts in a sort of zombie state" dance.

For what it's worth only the admin user has to be on the Standard tier to use your own domain. The others can be on the basic tier of €3/user/month from where I am.

Just to add, one of my golden rules for online stuff is to never use one of the ecosystem providers for my email or anything critical.

I have accounts with MS, Google, and Apple, but my domains are elsewhere and my emails are with Fastmail.

The reason is simple. There are too many tales of the ecosystem providers cutting off accounts with no reason and no recourse. If that happens I may well lose some purchases (which ought to be illegal, and I don't buy from the ecosystem providers anyway personally) but I will not be locked out of anything other than devices that need their account (iOS, Android, Azure, etc).

Give one of these providers control over either your domains or your emails and you have a single point of failure for your whole online life (emails, banking, password resets, etc) and whose main concern is policing their obscure Ts & Cs for their other cloud properties. The risk is huge.

Users won't lose anything purchased - your google login will stay the same (Same as you can use your Yahoo e-mail as google login), you will just lose g suite domain hosting.

Doesn't affect me, but that's useful info for those caught up in this - thanks.

I'm not following your line of thought.

G Suite domain hosting includes the email address and the user licenses (albeit free ones.) If you stop paying for G Suite (Google Workspace) the user licenses will be revoked. They will not be able to login to Google services, access Play Store / Music / Movies purchases, etc.

I don't think there's a "line of thought". This isn't a logic problem - it's a business decision. Whatever Google wants to happen will happens. And some people have interpreted the available information - or have spoken to google representatives - and been told that they'll be able to keep using "additional" services such as music, movies, youtube, photos. And - this being google - other people have been told the opposite.

The offical FAQ has been updated with this:

"What happens to my additional Google services and paid content if I don’t want to pay for Google Workspace premium features?

If you don’t upgrade to a Google Workspace subscription, you will not lose access to other Google Services, including YouTube, Google Photos, and Google Play, nor paid content, including YouTube and Play Store purchases."

https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwha...

Thanks for that. They really could have put this simple statement up at the start and avoided a lot of bad press.

Also, they could have told their stuff who've been fielding questions online about this change online; it might have stopped a few of them from telling people they'd be losing all their Photos, paid-for content etc.

Thank you! Seems like they sometimes listen afterall. They now also added: "In the coming months, we'll provide an option for you to move your non-Google Workspace paid content and most of your data to a no-cost option. This new option won't include premium features like custom email or multi-account management. You'll be able to evaluate this option prior to July 1, 2022 and prior to account suspension. We'll update this article with details in the coming months."

They've added yet another section to that FAQ: "possibly maybe let's see what we can do because I like your face sir" they might do something with up to ten users:

https://9to5google.com/2022/01/26/g-suite-legacy-free-person...

As you'd expect from Google it's vague and unfinished - what happens to the other users you don't choose to save, or perhaps you have to delete all but 10 users, and what happens to those 10 users anyway.

Tune in again in a few days and see what else has changed on that FAQ, or search for news articles about this process because they sure as hell aren't going to email you about it.

They can't even kill services properly any more!

Yes they will:

"If you don’t upgrade to a Google Workspace subscription, you will not lose access to other Google Services, including YouTube, Google Photos, and Google Play, nor paid content, including YouTube and Play Store purchases."

Source: https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwha...

> But I have no idea what the migration of a decade of email across 5 inboxes will look like; not to mention Calendar and contacts.

Contacts and Email seems to be the easy part: you can download the emails via IMAP to a client like Thunderbird, and the re-upload them on a new account. Years ago I did this transferring from one G Suite account to another for a friend, worked very well. Contacts can be exported in CSV and then imported bia CSV, no big deal too. I have routinely transferred loads of contacts between different systems this way, including Gmail. With calendar, I never had a necessity to transfer data, but I imagine that there are ways, given that it uses a standard iCalendar format.

Are you sure about the re-uploading part? I've had an issue like that last week, and am currently stuck with my mails locally, not able to 'put them back' to the IMAP server. Not Gmail though.

I most definitely did re-upload it without any issues to another G suite account. It was in 2014 though, maybe something did change since then. Here [1] people write that there are probably some differences between Gsuite and regular gmail accounts.

[1]: https://superuser.com/questions/446135/import-e-mail-via-ima...

Make sure you are not uploading into the Inbox folder. Any other folder should be fine.

you can use a tool called imap-sync ( at least thats what i remember it was called)

Having been through maybe a dozen of these over the last decades, my experience says that when all costs/hours/conversations are added up it’s going to be cheaper and maintain those relationships better if you simply bill your friends and family so everyone can stay with Gmail.

And my advice: If you go that way, charge them automatically by CC every month and add a 30% markup to cover inevitable extra costs like footing the bill when someone cancels unexpectedly.

I switched to Fastmail about 6 months ago after a decade on Google Apps. Yes, it’s paid, but I like it.

The problem isn't just mail. Mail is easy to migrate, but this means you either pay, or you lose access to everything you bought on that account, like Android apps, music, YouTube premium (and playlists), and so on

I can’t help you there. I don’t rely on those other things much. I still buy all my mp3s and I don’t have many apps on my iPhone. It was partly principled opposition, partly indifference.

Why would you lose purchases? Can't you continue to log in with the same email@domain just with a different provider for mail / calendar / etc.?

If you migrate to a google workspace subscription wouldn't you keep the purchases?

I don't even think you have to do that. Your Play account is tied to the email address itself, which you can migrate to another provider with DNS, not the workspace / gsuite stuff.

According to what I've read I'll lose access to my google play purchases made under my legacy g suite account unless I decide to pay $6/month indefinitely. I'm not 100% sure, can't be until I do it; but I'm pretty certain, after reading through posts like https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/3195114/transfe...

For what it's worth, I came across this passage:

> After 60 days in suspension, you will no longer have access to Google Workspace core services, such as Gmail, Calendar, and Meet. You may still retain access to additional Google services, such as YouTube and Google Photos.

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

"You may"? May's a stupid word. Do they mean "You are permitted" or "hey, you may have access, you may not - depends how we feel".

Is there a definitive list of which are "Google Workspace core services, such as Gmail, Calendar, and Meet" and which are "additional Google services, such as YouTube and Google Photos."?

Do the 50 (in my case) G Suite legacy accounts on my domain because just 50 regular first-order Google accounts but without the core services? Can I still use gmail and point it at an external email provider?

And it's probably nothing to worry about but it's a bit odd there's no "i'm never going to upgrade and pay 50 users * $6 per month for this so please just cancel the G Suite workspace thing now and let me use my account on Android, with access to the apps and movies I bought, and using some other email provider" option and instead they're probably going to keep nagging me to "provide payment information". What if I use google pay - are they going to assume I'm interested in paying through that?

The list of core services is defined here: https://workspace.google.com/terms/user_features.html

Anything else that happens to work is an additional service.

My guess on the "may" part is that there is no guarantee it'll work, and the product teams of the non-core services won't go out of their way to make it work if it breaks. But they also won't go out of their way to turn it off, and so it will probably just keep working for some time.

People are having online chats with google and are being told they will not keep Photos once they cancel. So I think it's safe to assume that if there's not an official google page saying "you will not lose your photos" etc you must prepare for them to vanish either immediately or at any point in the future.

The official FAQ has been updated with the following:

"What happens to my additional Google services and paid content if I don’t want to pay for Google Workspace premium features?

Source: https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwha...

Zoho is the only one I know that still offers free email with custom domains, but with limited number of users - https://www.zoho.com/mail/custom-domain-email.html

Both Microsoft and Yahoo offer the ability to do “imap in”. Could that be used to sync down the email from Google and then you reconfigure your DNS provider to forward email to your Yahoo/Microsoft personal email account and configure that account to send email using your custom domain name.

What is lost in that case?

IMAP doesn't sync stuff like calendar, contacts, tasks, settings, email filters (not usually, anyway), and many online clients will only download the email headers in bulk, not the contents; those are often lazy-loaded in when you open a message, especially from more than two weeks ago.

A more reliable way to transfer email would be to download all email through POP3 and then copy them over to an IMAP account on the new server.

You can definitely export your account information (in fact, European data portability laws pretty much require Google to provide such a functionality) but importing it may require some custom tooling.

Unless either Google or the receiving party provides an official migration tool, migration is probably a pretty sucky experience. I know it can be done (companies and educational institutions switch between Google and Microsoft all the time) but I'm not sure if there's any good migration path unless you can get in contact with someone from sales.

Your use-case could be well solved by Cloudflare's email forwarding[1]. I'm contemplating switching since I'm already on Google One.

[1][https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/email-forwarding]

That is a third party paid app.

The Cloudflare one is in preview https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing/

We're mass enabling the zones that have asked for Beta access and will be going GA soon. Email me at celso@cf if you can't wait; we'll try to prioritize.

Are you going to add smtp relaying / sending mails too?

Otherwise this is a one way street, you can receive mail on your domain, but not send from it.

You can use the SMTP relay from other providers. The free tier should be enough for a personal account or two. For example AWS SES, Mailgun, Sendgrid, etc.

I never got this e-mail. Does that mean I'm not subject to this?

Your email is probably sitting in a job queue. I would start looking at other options now.

I didn't get the email either, or at least not yet, but when I logged on to the admin console the notice was there.

Unless you verify that it's not in the admin console (and continue to verify that it's not there), I'd assume you're subject to it.

I've not got this either and its not in the admin console. I'm guessing I'll see it in the next couple of days. Think I'll be moving to Zoho mail.

Fortunately, all my Google stuff like Youtube and Google Play purchases are tied to a gmail account. I intentionally didn't use my custom domain for that, as I thought this would happen one day. I didn't expect the free email to last so long though.

I received this email about an hour ago, so it must be being sent out progressively.

Shameless plug but https://epostflytt.se is a online mail transfer tool. Coming to think about it we should add calendar and contacts as well.

What is it? I can't read the page but am interested in something that could ease migration.

You add your credentials for the old and the new account and the tool moves the mail between the two. Very easy if you don't want the hassle. It should indeed exist an english version, I think there's a newer version soon to be released.

You can add several mail accounts and get a mail when the transfer is complete.

Would you be comfortable adding your email credentials for two accounts in a tool you didn't write?

That's how most of those tools work from what I've seen. Some let you use an MS365 admin account with impersonation rights, but that's even worse than giving up the credentials for all the normal user accounts.

The biggest problem with every migration tool I've ever tried is they all do a very poor job of reconciliation. I've even used a few that incorrectly report success for partial (aka broken) migrations.

The MS365 IMAP migrations are a good example of poor reconciliation, but at least they give you total message counts if you're paying attention. What I'd really like is a tree view of the old mailbox vs the new mailbox with read/unread message counts for every folder.

If I was to do this, I would:

1. Change password of each account

2. Enter credentials into tool

3. Wait for process to complete

4. Check process completed successfully

5. Change passwords of each account back to what they were (or new passwords)

This at least minimises the window of malfeasance. There's no guarantee, however, that said untrusted tool doesn't also syphon all mail off into its own data-mining database.

Those that don't trust the tool move their mail themselves I guess.

Things will probably get better as more providers have support for OAUTH2.

But still you allow someone else to see your mail.

Best case is that the destination provider have support for the migration such that you can import directly in your new mail.

Or IMAP support inside the browser!

I'm guessing tutanota is cheapest - $1/month. But there's no easy, automatic way to migrate from gmail.

Protonmail is more expensive at $5/month and provides migration from Gmail.

There are also other options - like Zoho.

> The loss of Youtube purchases; android play purchases, etc. is going to hurt.

If you migrate to a different email provider, you won't lose access to any of your purchases.

Do you have a definitive source form Google on that? There seem to be conflicting messages from Google. (Not helped by the "may" wording on this page: https://apps.google.com/supportwidget/articlehome?article_ur... )

Yes, the official FAQ has been updated with the following:

"What happens to my additional Google services and paid content if I don’t want to pay for Google Workspace premium features?

Source: https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?hl=en#zippy=%2Cwha...

Check out https://360.yandex.com/business/tariff .

They have a free “limited” plan that should be good just for a custom domain email.

>But I have no idea what the migration of a decade of email across 5 inboxes will look like; not to mention Calendar and contacts.

Painful. I know first hand. It is no surprise that these companies make migrating out of their services as painful as possible. This is why I treat personal services like I treat business services now: if there isn't a realistic exit option, I don't use it. There are just too many examples of services being cancelled, accounts banned, and prices jacked up unreasonably.

Having used Microsoft Outlook for personal use and Gmail for work, the UI for Google is so much better. Much less clutter IMO.

I've had good experiences with Mailbox.org - the basic plan supports multiple domains with wildcards. Also, a neat free option is Seznam.cz though I don't have considerable personal experience with the domain feature on it.

You can use mailinabox.

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