End of the road for biz living off free G Suite legacy edition
- Reference: 1655792833
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/06/21/g_suite_legacy_free_edition/
- Source link:
"For businesses, the G Suite legacy free edition will no longer be available after June 27, 2022," Google explains in its [1]support document . "Your account will be automatically transitioned to a paid Google Workspace subscription where we continue to deliver new capabilities to help businesses transform the way they work."
Small business owners who have relied on the G Suite legacy free edition aren't thrilled that they will have to pay for Workspace or migrate to a rival like Microsoft, which happens to be [2]actively encouraging defectors. As noted by The New York Times on Monday, the approaching deadline has [3]elicited complaints from small firms that bet on Google's cloud productivity apps in the 2006-2012 period and have enjoyed the lack of billing since then.
[4]
Despite these inevitable gripes, Google's reorientation of its services may not have done much damage to its cloud services brand, long known for [5]abandoning underperforming products. Todd Cave, founder and COO of Dallas, Texas-based Cave Consulting, told The Register that Google's decision to discontinue G Suite legacy free edition has not had a noticeable effect among his firm's clients.
[6]
[7]
"We don't typically recommend our clients trust any free subscription," said Cave in an email.
Google keeps legacy G Suite alive and free for personal use [8]RELATED
Free services simply can't be counted on, as demonstrated by Google's [9]discontinuation of unlimited cloud storage for Google Workspace for Education customers, which takes effect in July.
Things could be worse. When Google originally alerted the world to the end of G Suite legacy free edition [10]in January , the impact looked as if it would affect everyone who had signed on during G Suite's early days.
But faced with an outcry, Google in May moderated its cull to include only those using the free G Suite for commercial purposes; those using G Suite legacy free edition for non-commercial purposes – individuals and families – were given [11]the option to opt-out of the forced Workspace transition.
[12]
Customers able to opt-out will be allowed to continue using Gmail with whatever custom domain was set up for Google Apps for Your Domain, and will retain access to services like Drive, Calendar, Meet, and Chat at no cost.
Opting out is necessary for those who wish to avoid the transition. Failure to take action will result in G Suite legacy free edition accounts being suspended on August 1, 2022.
The Workspace transition does not affect those using the free version of Gmail that comes with a Google Account, or those using YouTube, Google Photos, or the personal version of Google Drive that comes with 15 GB of free storage.
[13]
In fact, it does not appear to affect all that many people. Citing an unidentified source, The New York Times says the number of individuals still using G Suite legacy free edition is "in the thousands." ®
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[1] https://support.google.com/a/answer/2855120?hl=en
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/11/microsoft_365_offer/
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/technology/google-gsuite-small-business-fee.html
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YrGWxdWwQ2M1x3HKAyxOAgAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://killedbygoogle.com/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YrGWxdWwQ2M1x3HKAyxOAgAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YrGWxdWwQ2M1x3HKAyxOAgAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/18/google_keeps_legacy_g_suite/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/10/google_workspace_storage_policy/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/20/google_sours_on_g_suite/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/18/google_keeps_legacy_g_suite/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YrGWxdWwQ2M1x3HKAyxOAgAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YrGWxdWwQ2M1x3HKAyxOAgAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
What did people expect? I've been trying (albeit not completely successfully) to de-googlify my life for some time, and to do that (surprise surprise) I have to pay other people money to give me similar services. Evidently, Google couldn't turn these people into enough of a product to make it worth their while.
So, advertising doesn't bring in enough money then ?
[1]$256 billion isn't enough to offer a free service ?
I think that's called greed, pure and simple.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-global-revenue/
I had a burner account with the free Google suite for many years. I only ever used it to try it out to see what it’s like.
"Free services simply can't be counted on, as demonstrated by Google's discontinuation of unlimited cloud storage for Google Workspace for Education customers, which takes effect in July."
Oh yes they can. Just download LibreOffice or one of the other FOSS alternatives
OK, not strictly speaking a service but that's for the better. As Google have illustrated numerous times, a service can be turned off; an unencumbered executable, running on your own hardware, can't.
You can get close to most of the other services with a home installation of Nextcloud. You still need email though, its not worth the effort of hosting your own email server anymore
My main issue moving (I have also wanted to change my domain and email address) has been those companies that key your account to an email address and then don't let you change that :-(
Free, who expects it forever?
-> Small business owners who have relied on the G Suite legacy free edition aren't thrilled that they will have to pay for Workspace or migrate to a rival like Microsoft
Do these same small businesses offer their goods for free for eons? I don't mean giving something away once in a while, I mean a service they provide for free for years on end? You get what you pay for.
It was a good move
Ive been using a free G Suite legacy account for a small business with less than 20 employees for 10+ years and this coaxed me into taking another look at Office 365 which Id ignored for the last 5 years due to it being a slow, unresponsive mess when I last looked at it. I was pleasantly surprised to find it was much improved and the browser apps are streets ahead of Googles offerings in terms of functionality and usability. Its still isnt quite as responsive as Google Apps, especially when it comes to Outlook vs Gmail in the browser but its good enough. It offers more and better features and at the basic end its almost half the cost. I just wish they had some decent migration tools, it ended up being a manual weekend slog with a lot of G Documents needing manual conversion and tweaking. Even our preferred Linux email clients (Evolution & Geary) work great with it and it integrates into our local Nextcloud instance quite well
Your account will be automatically transitioned to a paid Google Workspace subscription
That is a bit cheeky. Whilst I've no doubt that their right to do this was buried in the small print of the Ts&Cs that nobody reads in full, to automatically transfer people over from a service that was heavily promoted as "being free" to being billed is bad faith exemplified.
I'm thinking of putting some new Ts&Cs on my website. That whilst access for the Google web crawler may have been free in the past, I reserve the right to start charging them a subscription in the future. Their fault if they don't read them properly and get hit by a bill.
Bait
and Switch.