Google relents: Legacy G Suite users will be able to migrate to free accounts | Hacker News Reader

Google relents: Legacy G Suite users will be able to migrate to free accounts

arstechnica.com

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I'm on the Legacy G Suite free plan with just only an email @mydomain account that is my main email.

I will like if they make a small fee plan that has a regular consumer Google Account with the only extra feature of a custom domain. That's it. No Workspace features, admin, multiple users and all that company related stuff.

I'm pretty sure at the end I will pay for Workspace starter plan ($6/month), don't want to deal with migration to other service.

I'm was in this boat too. But the more I look at fastmail the more I think: fuck these bell-ends, I'm outta here.

I still maintain a legacy gmail.com account which I'll keep and move all my android purchases over to but as a matter of principle if they said "free forever" and then renege I'm not just gonna roll over and take it.

Are you sure it's possible to move Google Pay purchases from one account to another?

> Naturally, this move led to a huge outcry outside (and apparently inside) Google, and now, the company seems to be backing down from most of the harsher terms of the initial announcement. [..] > the company is surprised by how many people this change affected.

I would expect that this system is too complicated to simply run `select count(*) from users where status = 'legacy'` but I'm certain they knew exactly how many free-loading "businesses" would be affected.

Too late for me, already started my migration to Fastmail.

The article does address paid content, which is good, but my larger concern is still with my Cloud Identity. I've used my custom domain under Google as authentication on hundreds of third-party sites.

If i use this migration tool and move to @gmail.com, will third-party sites still recognize and honour my custom domain Google login credentials?

> If i use this migration tool and move to @gmail.com, will third-party sites still recognize and honour my custom domain Google login credentials?

I'd imagine so, as you can already have a Google account without a Gmail address on your own domain name.

> I'd imagine so, as you can already have a Google account without a Gmail address on your own domain name.

From the google "upgrade" page[1]

"This new option won't include premium features like custom email"

so, no, having a google account without a gmail address will no longer work unless you switch to google workspace (paid).

Logins using <name>@<custom-domain>.com will still work, but if you need a password reset using email (very common), it will fail unless you set your email up again with a different email provider (e.g. fastmail).

[1] https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217#data&zippy=%2Cif-i...

You can add your custom domain as an alias on your free Gmail account. That is my setup. Works perfectly.

Which is absolutely not even remotely close to being the same as your custom domain being a Google OAuth provider. The question stands - hard to imagine how it won't require action on users' parts.

And even in the context of this thread, having a sending alias doesn't magically make you able to check mail on a domain you don't control... having a forward alias means nothing in this context.

Examples:

* If anyone were using a paid Tailscale plan with a free GSuite account, they're probably just hosed. I have no idea how they're going to migrate short of Tailscale extending their auth mechanisms.

* Anyone "logging in" with a custom domain email might need to click a link to finish logging in. Unless your GSuite admin migrates mail services manually, you're not getting that email.

When Google announced the shutting down of legacy Gsuite they stated that authentication based upon the legacy accounts would continue to work. As would access to apps and media purchased under that account. Hopefully this will continue to be the plan if one doesn't take advantage of the migration tool.

Are you paying for email hosting on the custom domain and forwarding the received emails to Gmail?

If so that doesn't really solve the problem of the product no longer being free anymore, you now have to pay for email hosting...

Google is entitled to stop offering a specific feature if they want.

The outcry was because they did not offer any migration strategy for accounts that had been created under the free GSuite offer - it was either pay up, or have the account and all associated data be deleted across all Google services.

There is a difference between having your email hosted by them, and having an account where your email address is the account identity ("username")

As my and my family's whole life is within my domain, this is a huge stress Google brought upon me. TBH I sleep worse because of the uncertainties.

However, there are still many questions to be answered and solutions to be offered:

* It is possible to use Google with non-gmail e-mail address. One can set up gmail to receive (using forwarding) and send (using an outgoing smtp) email. Self-hosted or commercial, that's not a problem. * However, how tied are other non-workspace services to Workspace? If I get a suspended Workspace account, will my e-mails work as expected? * Will all of my 2FA work as expected? What about my pre-paid storage purchases? * Won't my user@domain account drop into some weird neither-here-neither-there mode, if I don't pay up? * What will happen with my Google Docs? Right now it's impossible to transfer ownership outside current Workspace account.

I see that Google did not put much thought into this at the time of the announcement, however these few days are very stressful. user@domain is my primary email for all services where an email is required. For example, I have 20GB worth of e-mail there (since early 2000s) which I'm not ready to forfeit. Without an option to transfer it I'm lost.

Email is actually one of the easier things to transfer. This [1] project lets you download emails, including stars, labels, drafts, sent, etc. You can then re-upload them to another Gmail account with minimal loss of state. You can also import into other email services, although that route has more rough edges.

[1]: https://github.com/GAM-team/got-your-back

Honestly I have very little hope that Google will be able to provide a seamless migration that doesn't cause all sorts of issues down the line (Especially if you are using google cloud, firebase, analytics, play store developer, etc). It makes me think of what some people deal with when they log into iTunes/App Store with 1 Apple ID and then they login to their phone with a separate one which is supported but iffy or at least odd. I never like to have an account setup that is different/odd/non-standard. I can just imagine spending hours/days/weeks years from now trying to figure out why something isn't working only to finally hear "Oh, I see your account was converted from a legacy google apps account which caused....", if I'm even lucky enough to talk with a human with access to debug that deep about an issue I have.

I think I'd rather just pay the money (which is easier for me than some, I only need 1 account). I always knew this was a possibility and I'm glad I got as good of a run as I did. I've had this account since they first released "G Apps", they've earned the $6/mo going forward.

It won't be $6/mo for long. They know that when you're using all the services data migration is incredibly hard. They'll raise prices by 20% per year forever.

There'll be lots of new $6/month plans in the future, with slightly different names and feature sets, but as an existing customer you'll never be eligible for them.

Kudos to them for listening to users.

Does this also mean that I can migrate my GSuite account too? My non "legacy" one?

If there are other Simple Login / free G Suite users, please upvote the github issue below. With Google providing a way to migrate from G Suite to a normal Gmail account, SL is considering adding SMTP access which would allow us to migrate an unlimited amount of user / domains over. This would provide a cheap way to forward / respond from our domain addresses while using a free Gmail address. https://github.com/simple-login/app/discussions/679

Migration down or even laterally to another Suite domain account is very interesting if they manage to include everything in the accounts. It was a huge nightmarish omission in the previous annoucement.

But now they're heroes who listen to user feedback!

Does this mean I could use something like the Cloudflare email routing beta

https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-routing/

& use my old custom domain like before + have a catchall on that domain, while also maintaining my existing mail archive & google purchases?

Yes.

The issue will be sending email as the custom domain. You will need to use another service besides to send email as the custom domain.

I have had a legacy Gsuite account for years but only used it to forward email to my regular Gmail account and to send email as my custom domain email address. Gsuite would take care of issues such as DKIM so my emails would pass spam filters.

Once the announcement was made I requested access to the Cloudflare email routing beta. It took about 24 hours to get access. Cloudflare now routes email for my custom domains to my normal Gmail account. I signed up for the $1 a month Zoho email service and use it purely to send emails from my custom domains. Zoho does all the needed DKIM signing. I signed up for the $1 account because I needed to be able to send from 2 domains. They have a free tier which should work if you have 1 domain.

Someone is going to ask why I don't just use the Zoho account to receive my email too. I actually like Gmail and I like the integration with other Google services I use.

I am still waiting on my CF email beta login. I requested it _ages_ ago but I must not have qualified.

How does this work with your mail client? Can you configure it to read from gmail, but send through zoho? Or do you have to switch accounts to reply?

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