[HN Gopher] GSuite legacy users can now get a free personal acco...
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       GSuite legacy users can now get a free personal account, includes
       Gmail
        
       Author : tekni5
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2022-05-16 20:56 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | jmull wrote:
       | Huh.
       | 
       | Well, I already moved my custom domain email over to fastmail.
       | 
       | Been meaning to for a while anyway... I'd rather pay them a few
       | bucks than keep having Google do whatever it was they were doing
       | with my email (maybe nothing all that bad, but who the hell
       | knows?)
       | 
       | The transition was smooth.
        
         | jacamera wrote:
         | I did the same but was already a Fastmail customer. Didn't even
         | realize you could add additional domains to an existing account
         | without any additional charge. Great service!
        
       | atestu wrote:
       | Good things come to those who procrastinate, I guess.
        
       | dageshi wrote:
       | Whelp screw me for proactively dealing with the situation I
       | guess?
        
       | filmgirlcw wrote:
       | This is a relief. I might still move some of my personal domains
       | off of GSuite, but the fact that I don't have to is honestly a
       | real relief.
       | 
       | And I wouldn't even mind paying. If you wanted to charge me just
       | for email without any of the other stuff and not offer support,
       | I'd pay $100 a year if you could give me unlimited (or even 25 or
       | whatever the original number of email addresses was) separate
       | inboxes. But when you insist on charging me $5 or $6 a month per
       | address and domain (which for my completely personal use case
       | would be $24 a month), and I'm not ever going to use any of the
       | other stuff -- then I get annoyed. Especially since I could have
       | just set up an alias on a free account, years later, when that
       | became an option.
       | 
       | I understand these types of plans keep getting shut down because
       | businesses or spammers or moochers abuse them, I do. But a
       | personal/family targeted plan for hosted email with a custom
       | domain should be something someone can offer that doesn't charge
       | people $25 or $30 a month.
        
         | qbasic_forever wrote:
         | I seriously doubt GSuite legacy was a huge spam vector. You
         | still have to send mail through Google's gmail infrastructure
         | and be beholden to all the spam, abuse, etc. mitigations in
         | place there. GCE is probably a bigger source of spam with
         | people spinning up a VM, cranking out millions of SMTP
         | requests, and dipping out.
        
           | advisedwang wrote:
           | GCE blocks outbound port 25
           | (https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls#blockedtraffic)
        
           | filmgirlcw wrote:
           | Well, it wasn't just Google. Microsoft cut out the free
           | custom email domain for OneDrive, Zoho cut theirs way down --
           | so my feeling is that it had to have been abused in some way,
           | even if it wasn't strictly spam.
        
         | interestica wrote:
         | Yeah this has been insanity. Really poor communication and
         | rollout -- I swear I was one of the last to get notifications
         | within email/admin.
         | 
         | I'd gladly pay for the personal service if it wasn't per-user.
         | 
         | Though, I'm sure google got a lot of value out of this. I
         | switched myself and many others onto gsuite early on. It was
         | some of their first introductions to the "google apps" that
         | have now become the structure for their "Workspace".
        
       | trombonechamp wrote:
       | 36 hours too late for me - I deleted my 14+ year old GSuite
       | account yesterday morning. Oh well, Fastmail seems great so far.
        
         | throwntoday wrote:
         | I had been holding off out of laziness but all this does is
         | give me more time before I transition to fastmail as well.
         | Google is not offering any assurances they won't do something
         | similar in the future. And renegging on the free tier I simply
         | use for email has left a bad taste.
        
         | exikyut wrote:
         | That's definitely within a reasonable deletion windowpz but
         | also maybe up against the edge of it - try yelling really
         | loudly (tweet @AskWorkspace, ask contacts/friends, etc,
         | basically move _now_ ) and you very well might be able to get
         | it back.
         | 
         | (I see there's an email address at the bottom of the link in
         | your bio FWIW, just in case someone might consider reaching out
         | that way)
        
       | jrib wrote:
       | I transitioned to fastmail for e-mail and am happy I did. I
       | really like google docs and google sheets, but I'm moving off of
       | google drive for everything else and just using syncthing.
        
         | nexus7556 wrote:
         | Same. I recently moved to iOS and I found the Gmail app to be
         | pretty buggy. Staring emails worked about 50% of the time,
         | scrolling in HTML emails was very janky, clicking on a
         | notification and reading an email didn't mark the email as
         | read. This plus the Gsuite transition pushed me to Fastmail. I
         | now use that plus the native iOS mail app and I have no
         | complaints.
        
       | johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
       | We need to rise against Google. Google keeps users hostages for
       | more money. It shouldn't be tolerated under any circumstances.
        
       | meibo wrote:
       | This is great, but really should've been done in the first place.
       | Must've been a major PR oversight/disconnect, no clue how that
       | happened.
        
       | htrp wrote:
       | I'd like to know what exactly was the decisioning around this as
       | it seems like a case study in how not to do product management.
        
         | Nican wrote:
         | Probably trying to get rid of people using their service like
         | this:
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ufa4v4/google_...
        
         | gushie wrote:
         | Perhaps Google just wanted to scare businesses on the legacy
         | plan into migrating to the paid service, expecting that those
         | who could afford to pay wouldn't leave it to the last minute.
        
       | hacker_newz wrote:
       | Why did I have to find this out from Twitter rather than Google?
        
       | floatinglotus wrote:
       | I migrated everything to Zoho already. $1 a month is a fair
       | price.
        
       | qbasic_forever wrote:
       | Just moved my legacy plan over to the 'new' personal use/free
       | plan and it seems fine. Good grief how this wasn't the plan from
       | the very start is just beyond me. I hope the complete trashing of
       | trust and perception with the earliest and most tech connected
       | users was worth it, Google.
        
         | pdw wrote:
         | I guess you weren't a Google Reader user. Join the club :)
        
           | qbasic_forever wrote:
           | Oh I was, and I still have never forgiven them for it lol.
        
       | sputr wrote:
       | Load of my shoulders. As much as I hate to be beholden to Google,
       | both my parents (in their 70s) use our gsuit account with custom
       | domain and migrating them to a different service was ... well,
       | you know how it goes. The cost was a bit much.
       | 
       | So thanks Google.
        
         | filmgirlcw wrote:
         | Yeah, similar situation here. And yes, trying to explain to
         | others how to use a new email system would probably have been
         | more expensive than just paying but FFS, Google, way to freak
         | out a bunch of kids who have had to be the family IT admin.
        
       | Someone1234 wrote:
       | Anyone know if wildcards still work with this? I mostly make up
       | domain addresses on the fly e.g. hn@example.com
        
       | grandpoobah wrote:
       | Thanks for the unnecessary anxiety Google! I wish I could get
       | back the wasted brain cycles spent contemplating how the fuck I
       | was going to transition my family to something else.
        
       | bragr wrote:
       | I'm seeing that option in my account admin page now too. I'm
       | going to confirm mine is for personal use and see how it goes.
        
         | bragr wrote:
         | Quick and painless. I don't notice any immediate difference,
         | but I only use the core features really. Clicked the button and
         | it came back with the following text and that was it:
         | 
         | >You have chosen to continue using the Free Legacy Edition of G
         | Suite for personal use.
         | 
         | >If you change your mind and want access to premium features,
         | you can take advantage of a special discount by upgrading your
         | subscription in the Google Admin Console.
         | 
         | What a self inflicted mess though since this is what should
         | have been announced in the first place.
        
       | asd123124 wrote:
       | meh. this is _exactly_ what was always available.
       | 
       | The catch is, as soon as you migrate you will lose your gvoice
       | number, since that is not included in the "all free services will
       | be migrated".
       | 
       | And then it will be too late to research alternatives as you lost
       | your number and will start paying (and then realize your old
       | number is long gone :)
        
         | benguild wrote:
         | What? Where does it say you lose GV
        
         | greyface- wrote:
         | I just went through the opt-out process and my Google Voice
         | number still works.
        
         | smileybarry wrote:
         | Not exactly the same as normal Gmail, this option lets you keep
         | using a custom domain at $0/month, which basic Gmail doesn't
         | offer. To me it's 100% worth it as that was my main concern
         | (with so many accounts bound to my domain email).
        
         | csdvrx wrote:
         | What would you recommend to safeguard the number?
        
           | djchen wrote:
           | You can transfer your GV number to a consumer Google
           | (@gmail.com) account.
           | 
           | https://support.google.com/voice/answer/12083094?hl=en&ref_t.
           | .. See the section titled: "Transfer to another Google
           | Account (ends in @gmail.com)"
        
       | KerrickStaley wrote:
       | Hmm, I already opted in to Google Workspace, even though I only
       | use the account for personal use. I wonder if there will be an
       | option to switch?
        
         | op00to wrote:
         | Same boat, of course not. Google can take a hike.
        
         | theogravity wrote:
         | I would love to know this too. Should have waited it out...
        
         | mongol wrote:
         | Reddit to the rescue:
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/ur5x...
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | fartcannon wrote:
       | Stop letting them push you around like this. Leave, never look
       | back.
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-16 23:00 UTC)