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Comment by scumola | Hacker News Reader

Yet another good, working service that Google shuts down for the almighty dollar

(disclaimer, work for Google but not on this)

Even though it worked for preexisting users, new user signups were closed a decade ago so I feel like the writing was on the wall

Yes, and I've wanted to migrate my GSuite account to a regular personal/free Google Account for years, but Google has offered me no way to do so. Google even has what I need as a product: "Google Account without GMail". It would let me use my email address at my personal domain as my Google identity, and work exactly like an @gmail.com account, except no GMail. This would be perfect, but Google hasn't bothered to give me a way to migrate.

And no, Google Takeout doesn't work here, because a lot of the data on the account can't be imported into the new account. Think stuff like Chat history, YouTube subscriptions and watch history, sharing settings on Docs, albums and sharing settings on Photos, purchases on Play, payment methods and transaction history on Pay, and a whole host of other things.

So yes, the writing has been on the wall, but there's been no migration path out of the dead-end product. I see in another thread here that Google is working on a migration tool, but I expect that will just migrate me to a fresh @gmail.com account, which is not what I want.

If I understand your situation correctly, you don't really need to do a migration. The status quo (if you don't pay for GSuite after the deadline) is that you won't be able to receive send new emails, set up videoconferences in Meet, upload new stuff to Drive, etc. However you'll still be able to sign into the account, track your subscriptions in Youtube, install apps you've bought on the Play Store, sign in via OAuth on non-Google websites, etc.

edit: however I'm not sure how storage quotas work and if you'll be able to upload new things on Photos

I don't even mind paying for it but the nature of the transition and the cost for the features is obscene. For example, I have a secondary address for business reasons and in the new g suite that has to be an "account" which costs money every month

I maybe mistaken but I believe you can create additional aliases under the same account -- I seem to remember doing that a few months back when I got auto-updated to Google Workspace.

No it doesn't? You can set up unlimited aliases, afaik. If you want to have separate access however, it does. I'm currently planning to migrate my script-sending email address to mailgun or SES instead of using a separate gmail user.

I believe i've hit a limit before, but I just was able to add about 50 aliases to myself so it seems the limit has been increased or removed.

That's not a separate address/mailbox, that's a forwarding alias

As others have said, you can set up aliases / groups and those do not require additional accounts.

Also if you’re the only account then you can just configure a catch-all in the routing section so that anything@your domain goes to you. That’s no additional cost even on these basic accounts I believe.

I use this so I can also track by using a new address for each service (e.g. twitter@mydomain.com, ebay@mydomain.com, etc)

I do the catch-all too, it works with the free version but will it still work with the paid version, even the cheapest tier ? At this point I have given around a crazy number of stuff@my.domain addresses, some of them for pretty important stuff, and while I don't mind paying for the service (I really like the GMail UI, matter of taste I suppose, and that justifies the price for me), I really need the feature as loosing it would be nearly as bad as loosing the "primary" email address.

What free services do you operate?

Indeed. I can hardly blame any company for shutting down a free tier of service. I think many people would've been happy if Google Reader would've stuck around for a monthly fee.

You don't really think Google services are really free, right? Nobody paid me for my data.

Google doesn't operate "free services", they operate services in exchange for user data and advertising views.

A lot of the times it's a bait and switch. They give you a service in exchange for your data, then they pull the service away once they've got it.

Doesn’t google harvest advertising data from all of their “free” offerings?

Workspace ads work differently - for example, before 2017, Google didn't scan Workspace email for ad targeting (they no longer do it for personal email inboxes either[0]). That's the general rule, any official Workspace products[1] won't display ads or contribute to an advertising profile[2].

0: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/26/534451513...

1: https://workspace.google.com/intl/en/terms/user_features.htm...

2: https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650#zippy=...

Google has a monopoly and are part of many dupolies in many areas. Offering free services to create lockin and switching the terms is the basis of the complaints here.

Many small companies had a business around maps. Google's free products kill most of them. Now that they are gone google starts charging to embed maps.

What free services has the parent offered killing a market only to require payment short after? None..

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