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Comment by anaisbetts | Hacker News Reader

You can't export purchased licenses for software / media to another Google account, nor can you migrate Google Play Developer accounts. The mail isn't the problem, the problem is everything else tied to people's personal Google accounts

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You don't need to pay anything to google or to use googles mail functionality to keep licenses connected to an account.

Just move the accounts to the free version of "google cloud identity.

G Suite accounts are by definition not supposed to be personal accounts: they are for when an organization wants to own someone else's account, with the ability to do stuff like managing it and revoking its access; and so, just like when you are using an account given to you by your employer, you should not consider them "yours". If you want to complain about this, it should be that businesses that were using this system for free are being locked out, not personal accounts: if you were buying stuff for your personal use from Google Play using a G Suite account that was never a good idea. I realize people started using them like that, because they wanted a "personal" Google account with support, and I also realize that Google kind of caved on this a while ago when people were whining constantly about why they couldn't use Google+--a social network--with their G Suite accounts (with some resulting changes that completely messed up the model of how these accounts work, muddying up the namespace by mixing the various kinds of accounts together, which broke the ability to have a true personal account with the same email address as a domain owned by G Suite... something which awkwardly made it more difficult for the people who did understand this difference and who were making damned sure not to do something like attach a Google Developer account to a Google Apps account, lest I later decide to switch to a different workspace and email provider), but the mental model of using a G Suite account as a personal account never made sense.

> you should not consider them "yours"

It's my domain and I'm the admin on G Suite so it's just as much my personal account as any gmail account, and to follow your logic then you basically shouldn't use any kind of 3rd party service or cloud account.

>I realize people started using them like that

Perhaps that's because google advertised this as way to get a gmail address with a personal domain, offered a free basic tier to everyone that wanted, and rolled out support for all their products to use these accounts with them, without, it seems ever considering the eventuality of charging for the free tier and thereby holding accounts and data hostage in away they'd never consider for normal accounts.

But I guess that makes it harder for you to feel superior

> G Suite accounts are by definition not supposed to be personal accounts:

"Google Apps

For individuals and small teams

Free"

https://web.archive.org/web/20120602004504/http://www.google...

> just like when you are using an account given to you by your employer, you should not consider them "yours"

That's totally true but only if you are an employee, the business owner should have total access.

I don't see how a free GSuite account - where you are the business owner - is any less yours than a free gmail account.

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