Google could face class action lawsuit over free G Suite legacy account shutdown
androidpolice.comI don't understand why Google didn't just continue to grandfather the existing free accounts. They already limited them from changing primary domain and number of users that can exist. Additionally a lot of people (like me) will run out of storage and pay for the extra storage. Run ads in my account for all I care. Why is gmail still free at this point?
Instead they decided that stating "Free forever" doesn't mean forever and screw the people who decided to trust you from day 1.
Yeah, I know it's free and I shouldn't complain but moving email is a huge ordeal and giving me just a few months after 10+ years is a dick move. BTW, I have yet to receive an email from Google telling me that my account will no longer be free. I first heard of this on HN yesterday.
I couldn't have said it better myself. I've been on the legacy account for a decade and giving us a couple months to migrate is a slap in the face.
I don't want anyone to think that this is just a bunch of people who are upset about paying. I'm not upset about paying. I'm upset about Google promising something and then pulling the rug out from under us. I have multiple Google Workplace accounts for my actual businesses and at the moment I believe I spend $3k-$4k USD per year on all the accounts. My legacy account was used as a family account. After this ordeal, I'm probably switching all my paid workplace accounts to Zoho, Office365 or another provider. Maybe this is the kick in the butt I needed to degoogle my life?
I've had mine since the days when I worked at Google. It's almost as old as my Gmail account. I'm pretty disappointed. I couldn't care less about docs and whatnot but migrating my email is going to be a PITA.
Docs is a big one for me. I have a decade of documents people shared with me, or that I've shared and published under known links.
If those disappear, a lot of things people count on will implode.
Not to mention that on the free tier the audit reports are limited, and you can't even get a csv of files shared along with who it's shared with.
That's part of an older dick move on Google's part. They made GSuite free intentionally as insecure as possible. That harm the whole internet.
I simply can't recreate my labels and filter structure on another platform, or even on a personal account, without having some tools.
And I don't know how I can migrate the apps which I've bought.
Yeah. I just moved my family domain to O365 and I’m planning to migrate the business domains I manage over as well. It’s a much better product for the price and business users will be happy. It’s just been so low priority for me to figure out migrations and with this kick in the pants for the family domain, I have a good story for migrations now.
Honestly I think this will end up proving to be a misstep akin to reader.
I'm not sure, but given the intermittent grief I've had with this, it seems like they have to pay a team to maintain it. Maybe it's more than just some cheapo storage and CPU time, but a cost to them in maintenance (including unexpected upkeep of seemingly unrelated features).
I can't imagine why that is. You'd think it would be easy. But I've had enough cases where my account wasn't compatible with something (especially my Pixel phone) that makes me suspect that this lets them jettison some of their code base.
I have run without support for 14 years, I take about as much resources for them as a gmail account.
Move me to the paid version, don't charge me, and then change me 50 bucks every time I need to open up a support case.
But for 50 bucks, I had better be able to get an actual person on the telephone ;-)
> I have run without support for 14 years, I take about as much resources for them as a gmail account.
It's may not be about supporting you as a user,but about supporting the feature of a free-tier of features whose users are >99.9% paying customers. I imagine having to pepper "is_billable() && !is_grandfathered()" everywhere gets old, and leads to some subtle bugs/test failures for a feature that's used by 0.03% (a guess) of users, who also happen to be non-paying.
Additionally, at Google's scale, systems interact with each other in non-trivial ways. As a hypothetical, if the CEO/director decrees that all teams should use G-Pay's code & internal infrastructure for all payments (for compliance reasons) by 2023, that may necessitate code & schema changes that do not work with "(mostly) billable customers" because grandfathered accounts may not have a billing method available (which G-Pay systems require); the G-Pay team can't add support for the "billable-customer-but-not-really" feature until the second half of 2024, unless the Workspaces team can just removing an item from the 2022 G-Pay roadmap that's projected to bring in an additional $200M revenue p.a.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Googler, I'm speculating based on my experience in large organizations with intricate cross-dependencies. The Workspace engineers may empathize with you, but their hands are tied,and they can't publicly share the trade-offs that are being made, which is unfortunate.
Except, they might be sued now, and it might be significantly more expensive.
They probably forgot what they wrote in their blog post
http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-host...
"Furthermore, organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided Google continues to offer the service)."
Yes, they can claim they are no longer providing the service, but that's difficult to argue when they are providing a functionally identical service that is just a billing change to cause a "migration".
Google has had 14+ years to figure a way out of this conundrum, they're a massive corporation with enough resources to literally buy a country. I'm a guy who finds the idea of running email for myself somewhat challenging.
I design and sell software, telling me that Google "doesn't have the resources" to solve this, holds about as much water as a colander.
They could have just moved us up to the starter tier and given us a large enough pricing credit that the billing system will never charge me.
> They could have just moved us up to the starter tier and given us a large enough pricing credit that the billing system will never charge me.
They could - but that's still work, and who will go to bat for this when there is other revenue-generating work to be done? "I kept non-paying-users from having to pay" isn't exactly promotion-packet material.
I commiserate with you - I too have a grandfathered domain (or 2), but 10+ years of ad-free services (email, Docs, GCloud, etc) for free in exchange for being Guinea pigs for a bit is a fantastic deal. Our utility as early-adopters was valuable at the start - now we're a disposable inconvenience. A vanishingly small number of "Free for life" deals are honored for life.
Edit:
> I design and sell software, telling me that Google "doesn't have the resources" to solve this, holds about as much water as a colander.
You misunderstand me: Google has the resources move every single paying customer to the free tier - if they choose to, but that is unlikely. They are equally unlikely to do replace revenue-generating work with something that doesn't move the needle: it's a question of motivation, not resources. For the software you design and sell, would you prioritize a feature only used by someone you donated your software to over your paying customers?
FWIW, I think I may have solved the mystery why some of us legacy users have not been notified.
http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-host...
"A standard edition of Google Apps for Your Domain is available today as a beta product without cost to domain administrators or end users. Key features include 2 gigabytes of email storage for each user, easy to use customization tools, and help for administrators via email or an online help center. Furthermore, organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided Google continues to offer the service)."
The original version of the TOS from August 2006 read as follows:
https://web.archive.org/web/20061029132431/https://www.googl...
"16. Modification. Except as provided in Section 17, Google reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement or any policy governing Google Apps, at any time, by posting the new agreement at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/terms.html or such URL as Google may provide. Customer is responsible for regularly reviewing any updates to this Agreement. Any changes or modifications to this Agreement will become binding (i) when made in a writing executed by both parties, (ii) by Customer's online acceptance of updated terms, or (iii) after Customer's continued use of Google Apps after such terms have been updated by Google."
"17. No Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer Google Apps for Your Domain to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of Google Apps for Your Domain (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer; provided that such commitment (i) applies only to End User Accounts created during the period when the Google Hosted Services are considered a beta service (the "Beta Period") by Google (such Beta Period determination at Google's sole discretion) and (ii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Google Apps for Your Domain in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of Google Apps for Your Domain for a fee."
In mid 2007 the language was changed to read the following:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070407174217/http://www.google...
"17. Modification. Except as provided in Section 18, Google reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement or any policy governing the Service, at any time, by posting the new agreement at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/terms.html or such URL as Google may provide. Customer is responsible for regularly reviewing any updates to this Agreement. Any changes or modifications to this Agreement will become binding (i) when made in a writing executed by both parties, (ii) by Customer's online acceptance of updated terms, or (iii) after Customer's continued use of the Service after such terms have been updated by Google."
"18. Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer the Service to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of the Service (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer; provided that such commitment: (i) does not apply to the Domain Service described in Section 4 above; and (ii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Service in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of the Service for a fee."
This version was persisting thru at least March of 2011:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110330181415/http://www.google...
However by December of 2011, that language was gone:
https://web.archive.org/web/20111231230542/http://www.google...
That's interesting. My account does date from July 2006 (I still have the emails in the archive!)
Mine is from March 2008
Nope, this doesn't work this way. Google's model includes various licensing options, including free accounts for nonprofits and educational institutions, special licences for government bodies, various levels of business/enterprise licensing, and so on. Trust me, licence checks take place at each login to a Google service, and maintaining the code is absolutely not an issue.
They are migrating everyone to the same system as the paid one and deferring payment for a month. So to me it sounds like a flag.
It sounds to me like a false flag. Free for life*! (* mayfly lifetime)
Time to degoogle my life. Google giveth and Google taketh, and Google discontinueth after years twain or so.
It's been a lot more than two years though, it's closer to 15.
Wouldn't it be running on the same setup as their paid offerings? It's the same thing, just with limitations.
It's the limitations that cost money. They are code and might require maintenance.
It doesn't seem like it would, but I have found myself in plenty of situations where I couldn't give an "easy" feature or fix an "easy" bug because of some design choice that was riddled throughout the code. No idea what it might be, but I could take guesees.
The maintenance cost is probably small for them, but not to support a customer paying zero.
Come on. They have long offered free Workspace for nonprofits and for some schools. This is not going away, and support for various licensing scenarios is certainly there in the code.
Interesting, thanks.
Having been the administrator for these, there was real cost to maintaining all the weird SKUs that Google Apps for Your Domain (which dates when this was) had at the time. It was not unthoughtof, but it also wasn't huge - and this SKU was not among the problem SKUs.
> moving email is a huge ordeal
Since the email in question is <something>@<yourdomain>.com, can't you just add a forward for that email address to some other non-Google email at whatever hosting provider you use for <yourdomain>.com? Then the email address itself would still work, it just wouldn't go to the broken Google account.
A lot of us have other stuff that it's unclear how we migrate. YouTube premium subscriptions, Google Voice, YouTube channels, "sign in with Google", Google play purchases, the list is endless...
Some of it includes pricing/specific products you can't sign up for any more, either.
I'd be happy if there was a way to migrate my account as is, with everything in tact to a regular@gmail account.
The article specifically states you won't lose access to anything you've paid for and you'll still be able to authenticate with that account. You just can't use it for mail, calendar, drive, etc. Just repoint your email to another service, export your calendar, and move your data somewhere else.
Considering GSuite is pretty much hot garbage in 2022, they're almost doing you a favor. Seriously, this is good for you. It'll be like you've been transported to the future!
in what way is gsuite garbage ? granted, i mostly just use gmail. but after a few years at [major company], gmail seems light years ahead of anything they use
I'm also still waiting to be told that it wont be free any longer.
Maybe the oldest accounts will be exempted, maybe those with the least activity will be, who knows, I cant even find the KB article indicating that an upgrade must happen anymore.
Here's the article: https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217?product_name=UnuFl...
>> "After 60 days in suspension, you will no longer have access to Google Workspace core services, such as Gmail, Calendar, and Meet. You may still retain access to additional Google services, such as YouTube and Google Photos."
This suggests authentication and external stuff that depends on it will still work.
"suggests" is not good enough, google needs an offical migration document or tool.
My notice ended up in the spam folder…
Not to mention the number of places where I’ve been using “Sign in with Google” from that account.
> moving email is a huge ordeal
Well, is it? Having your own domain makes it a little easier, doesn't it? Find an alternate service, update a handful of DNS entries, presto. Optionally use one of the various IMAP backup tools to move your mail. It's actually quite easy, IMHO.
I can confirm that moving email is the easiest of all the migration tasks. I connected my Google account and a destination email account to Outlook and moved all my email in less than 5 minutes.
Exactly the same situation. I haven't received any communication from Google about this.
I only have 1 user (a restriction which was already in force at the time I registered for the free tier), so I'm wondering whether this even applies to me?
And this is why any google product can't be trusted.
Let me correct you, this is why any FREE product can't be trusted.
I can't understands how people can expect free stuff to be forever... even more so here in Hacker News.
So if they come tomorrow and say now in order to keep using your @gmail.com account you now have to pay $100 a month, that would be ok for you?
Of course they can do that too. But this is clearly screwing up people, as it is not easy to change a lifetime email address.
If they say I cannot store my photos anymore, that's fine. I can move them. Changing an email address is not an easy thing to do. Or losing all your Google play purchases.
But yeah, at the end of the day nobody is forced to do anything for free (despite nothing google offers being free, as they sell ads with my data) but this shows just how you cannot trust anything from Google.
Personally my solution to this will be to pay for iCloud and move everything over there. I had planned moving to iPhone for privacy reasons anyway, so this is just another nail on the coffin for using any Google service ever again.
> So if they come tomorrow and say now in order to keep using your @gmail.com account you now have to pay $100 a month, that would be ok for you?
Where did I say any of this was ok? I'm saying you simply can't trust them. You can't expect to cost something to someone and trust that they will keep doing that forever. A business need to make money...
> as they sell ads with my data
They didn't over G Suite legacy. Sure at least if there's ads you know they may make a bit of money, can you trust it's enough to cover what you cost them? That's a whole other story certainly, but for sure you can't trust that if you literally bring no monetary value for them.
> this shows just how you cannot trust anything from Google.
I'll again correct you, can't trust anything free.
Yes. It's not about money, it's about trust.
Google is very far from a philanthropic organization, and these are not free accounts. They are free to the users and paid by the companies using Google Ads.
GMAIL is still free because of the wealth of information it gives them. Being able to scrape emails for products, services, travel etc, all help Google sell more ads.
What's stopping them doing that with these accounts? It would be perfectly reasonable.
The maintenance cost per user is much higher.
I also feel like this is not that much a matter of cash but mostly a matter of having to consider Legacy accounts each time they want to do anything over Google Workspace. It's just more trouble for nothing at all at the end.
Oh, great, a class action lawsuit. Upon success the plaintiff's law firm will collect a third+ of the multi-million dollar settlement, and each affected user will get...a coupon for 10% off a year's subscription to G-suite
> When we asked if moving purchases between accounts might be possible, a Google representative confirmed it wasn't
And the quote from Google:
> No, customers cannot move those subscriptions and purchases to a free Google Account. If a customer does not wish to upgrade, they will not be asked to forfeit their login credentials, and they will not lose access to other Google services, such as YouTube, Photos and Google Play, nor paid content, including YouTube and Play Store purchases.
So that sounds like I can migrate email, make sure I'm not using Google Docs, let the account drop to limited mode, and keep using my apps I've purchased. I don't really care about other Google services at this point because I haven't trusted them for years. As long as I can keep logging in on my phone so I have access to my app purchases, that's all I really care about.
You’ll have access to your app purchases, but you won’t be able to get email at that address. For example, that means you won’t be able to get email receipts about subscription renewals, about purchases being refunded, or any other pertinent information that google might choose to send over email.
It’s better than cutting everyone off entirely, but far from ideal. You’re basically left with a half cancelled account at that point.
Edit: See @jsnell’s followup. In this response, I totally forgot that you could just change the MX records and continue to use the Google Account. I don’t know why I thought this.
Of course you'd be able to receive email at that address, but you cannot have that email address be hosted for free at Google. You'd need to self-host, or pay somebody else to host email for that domain.
Ah yes, I feel like I totally forgot this. Thank you for pointing it out — you could totally just change the MX records and still use Workspace. I stand corrected! Thank you, Jason!
So back to the days where you could make a Google account with any email address before gapps exited. It was such a mess once domains where moved to gapps to know if it was a legacy account or gapps account. In fact I will still get prompted for some addresses.
> So back to the days where you could make a Google account with any email address
You can still do that, and it's not some obscure feature but asked about on the first page of the account creation flow with the "use my current email address instead" button. It'll be a fully functional Google account, except for supporting mail, and can be changed to a gmail account later (that feature is obscure though).
My guess would be that these legacy accounts will end up as something different than a consumer Google account created with a non-gmail address, but guess we'll see once it launches.
You don't need to self-host or host somewhere else either. You can use regular free GMail with a custom domain of your choice. I do this with mine.
Info? Because Google Apps for your domain also known as G Suite (legacy) is the method we've used for this and is going away as a free option. The other approach is to integrate a free gmail account with a mail hosting provider. You can use mailgun or similar to do it cheap but it still means you host your domain email server somewhere.
Google domains lets me do it for free.
True, my domain is also from Google domains (it's a .dev). I didn't think this feature was exclusive to that, but maybe it is.
Sounds like you might be using the free Google email forwarding feature outlined at https://domains.google/get-started/email/ To directly receive and send email from your custom domain Google upsells you to Google Workspaces https://domains.google/learn/how-to-use-email-forwarding/
Some other domain providers do offer email forwarding so its not exactly a Google exclusive.
I'm experimenting with CloudFlare's email forwarding (currently in beta) and it works very nice. Also, it's free and doesn't require changing registrars.
It is possible to have a google account without gmail
Yes, if you sign up for Google Cloud Identity you can create Google accounts without Mail, Calendar or Chat.
I wonder how hard it is to migrate to Google Cloud Identity from Gsuite after moving the MX & such away.
I have several free G-suite accounts that I use for various domains and services, including one I've used as my primary email for 10+ years. But over the last couple of years, it's become more annoying using the G-suite free accounts, as they aren't as full-featured as newer (paid) G-suite accounts or even free Google accounts. This announcement has finally given me the motivation to finally get rid of these accounts and move to a more modern solution. Unfortunately for Google, I've moved them to a paid M365 account since it has more features, is better specced (e.g. more storage), and is also cheaper.
Also - as others have mentioned here, I too haven't received an official notification from Google about the impending decommissioning. If they backtrack on this now, I'll still be off the Google platform and a couple steps closer to getting out of the Google ecosystem completely.
Same boat. I'm not mad. This is just the kick in the pants I needed. I already have a Mail-in-a-Box set up; now I have an unignorable reason to migrate everything.
M365 is what I am looking at, as well. Can you go into detail about the differences and what you found better with M365?
A fair settlement of this would be to allow users to continue using their existing domain names with the accounts striped down to the same functionality as a free Gmail account and associated service access. Unused user slots would be taken away as would administrator access.
How would that hurt Google besides taking away a modest revenue raising opportunity?
Edit: just to be clear, your account essentially becomes a gmail account that happens to have a custom domain name.
I believe there is a technical challenge they are not willing to overcome. My Google Apps account has long had broken integrations with almost all of the "new" google services. There is also a limitation in that you can't join a family group using a Google apps account, so I'm forced to have a regular gmail account anyways in order to participate in that.
I believe the limitation stems from the fact that Google Family uses the same underlying mechanism in Android as Mobile Device Management that's part of Workspace. I once managed to create an account that was simultaneously in Google Family AND in Google Workspace, but the end effect were constant notifications in Android that the account has joined Family, then deleted from Family, this several times a minute.
You'd still need some sort of administrator access, so you can remove accounts on your domain.
That would be the same process as deleting a Gmail account.
I mean, I would need an administrative panel to add or delete accounts in my domain, basically.
> allow users to continue using their existing domain names with the accounts striped down to the same functionality as a free Gmail account and associated service access
That would give them MORE features and services.
Probably more like the old legacy Google accounts that you could make with any email address before gapps exited.
These still exist and you can still create one today from the new account flow, by clicking the option to use your own email address when they ask what Gmail address you'd like.
This would seem to be a viable model for ex-gapps accounts, although a regular "non Gmail Google account" still has access to Google calendar and drive and other tools that ex-gapps users seem to be denied access to. That becomes an interesting disparity.
I want to understand why I've still not been notified.
Same here, I have not received anything yet. I have a large amount of domains I setup back in the day.
I was notified back in 2020 and decided to just can the (free) service. The most tedious thing I ever did was to go through my password manager and find every online service account that tied to my GSuite email address for the past decade and either change the email address or deprecate them entirely.
What was most interesting of my particular setup was having my GSuite email address forwarded to my regular GMail account and having the ability to compose emails on behalf of the GSuite email address. When I did log into the actual GSuite account, it had close to 5k~ unsolicited emails caught in the spam filter that never got forwarded.
Too late for you, but for anyone else or future reference, if you have account 1 forwarding to account 2 you can add a filter on account 1 with the condition "doesn't have the words" and the value "somelonggarbagestringthatwillneverbeinyourmail" and select "never send to spam". That way spam filtering only happens in account 2 where you can check it regularly.
Yeah same. Is it a country thing?
I set up my accounts in the UK, so possibly.
Yes, same!
Same. I'm holding off sharpening my pitchfork til I get an email.
I literally have one user, and only use email. I wonder if they're targeting heavier users...
Same here; one user, only email, with all other Google account functions on my primary Google account (which, conversely, lacks Gmail as the login is a non-Gmail address). I'm still expecting to have to either migrate or pay up, but if anyone gets grandfathered in it's people like us.
The lawyers appear to be filtering to people who have been informed by Google. I'm a legacy free gsuite instance with a domain but haven't been directly informed, I just know about it third hand.
I still expect the problem. As a non US instance I'm wary of class action in the US anyway.
why? ive cashed out many US class actions as an aussie.
Always assumed there's a cost side risk for low return. This may be different, the inconvenience here is high. Also in OZ
The only cost (AIUI - IANAL) is that if you join the class action, you waive your right to sue them for the same thing at a later date as an individual or as part of another class action lawsuit.
I’m pretty mad about this whole thing. All I want is to be able to downgrade my account to a free account - but there’s no way to do that. I have to delete it and everything connected to my Google Account - oauth logins, Nest, Maps, Drive, is collateral damage. I only signed up in the first place to get a custom domain for my personal gmail.
it's not even whether it's a rug pull after all these years or that the timeline of a few months isn't enough -- it's that there doesn't seem to be clear ways to migrate either down to gmail/fee google account or laterally to maintain all the disjointed G services etc.
I don't want to download my entire Takeout history and re-establish anything. In my case my 'provider' running G Suite wants to shut it down and I'm happy to pay to continue the service running my own G Suite account/domain, but can't see a way to guarantee safe transfer of my data!
Nightmare really.
Source: https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-hos... "A standard edition of Google Apps for Your Domain is available today as a beta product without cost to domain administrators or end users. Key features include 2 gigabytes of email storage for each user, easy to use customization tools, and help for administrators via email or an online help center. Furthermore, ORGANIZATIONS THAT SIGN UP DURING THE BETA PERIOD WILL NOT EVER HAVE TO PAY FOR USERS ACCEPTED DURING THAT PERIOD (provided Google continues to offer the service)."
and
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20070222003704/http://www.google...
"GOOGLE APPS FOR YOUR DOMAIN BETA AGREEMENT [..] 18. Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer the Service to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of the Service (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer; provided that such commitment (i) applies only to End User Accounts created during the period when the Service is considered a beta service (the "Beta Period") by Google (such Beta Period determination at Google's sole discretion), (ii) does not apply to the Domain Service described in Section 4 above, and (iii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Service in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of the Service for a fee." --
-np
I wonder if this is why some us have not been notified about this change. I signed up in 2008, which would have been very early in the services life - well before they offered paid accounts.
Okay, so here is a non trunkated version of the first link -
http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-host...
"A standard edition of Google Apps for Your Domain is available today as a beta product without cost to domain administrators or end users. Key features include 2 gigabytes of email storage for each user, easy to use customization tools, and help for administrators via email or an online help center. Furthermore, organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided Google continues to offer the service)."
The original version of the TOS from August 2006 read as follows:
https://web.archive.org/web/20061029132431/https://www.googl...
"16. Modification. Except as provided in Section 17, Google reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement or any policy governing Google Apps, at any time, by posting the new agreement at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/terms.html or such URL as Google may provide. Customer is responsible for regularly reviewing any updates to this Agreement. Any changes or modifications to this Agreement will become binding (i) when made in a writing executed by both parties, (ii) by Customer's online acceptance of updated terms, or (iii) after Customer's continued use of Google Apps after such terms have been updated by Google."
"17. No Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer Google Apps for Your Domain to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of Google Apps for Your Domain (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer; provided that such commitment (i) applies only to End User Accounts created during the period when the Google Hosted Services are considered a beta service (the "Beta Period") by Google (such Beta Period determination at Google's sole discretion) and (ii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Google Apps for Your Domain in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of Google Apps for Your Domain for a fee."
In mid 2007 the language was changed to read the following:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070407174217/http://www.google...
"17. Modification. Except as provided in Section 18, Google reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement or any policy governing the Service, at any time, by posting the new agreement at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/terms.html or such URL as Google may provide. Customer is responsible for regularly reviewing any updates to this Agreement. Any changes or modifications to this Agreement will become binding (i) when made in a writing executed by both parties, (ii) by Customer's online acceptance of updated terms, or (iii) after Customer's continued use of the Service after such terms have been updated by Google."
"18. Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer the Service to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of the Service (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer; provided that such commitment: (i) does not apply to the Domain Service described in Section 4 above; and (ii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Service in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of the Service for a fee."
This version was persisting thru at least March of 2011:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110330181415/http://www.google...
However by December of 2011, that language was gone:
https://web.archive.org/web/20111231230542/http://www.google...
I have no problem paying something, but $6/user/month for family emails @${SURNAME}.org that I've given out to dozens of extended family members isn't gonna work. Hopefully with all of the backlash they come out with a more reasonably priced plan for people doing personal email hosting.
I'm in the same boat. I think I'm likely going to stand up a Nextcloud instance on a VPS for calendar/contacts/docs and move mail (somewhere). Paying by user/mailbox is really not a good deal for the way we've been using it, so it will either be someone that charges based on domain/traffic/maibox size or something self hosted for received mail with a pay-per-message smtp smarthost.
It's really not something I'm happy about needing to figure out all of a sudden.
This +100. I'd pay a reasonable amount for my Google Voice numbers, too, if it would ensure that I don't lose them on short notice.
Same.
I am OK with paying $6/user/month for the new plans but they don't include Google Voice, which is $10/user/month. I would be ecstatic if they had a cheaper plan that included Google Voice or if they allowed me to migrate my Google Voice number/account to a regular Google account.
Can you port it out and back in?
It's possible for now but you lose all your history, settings, etc. And my Google Voice number has been primary number for a decade or so and thus has a lot of important stuff that I would like to keep.
I was able to migrate a Google Voice number and history from one @gmail.com to another @gmail.com - IIRC there was someone on Google support forums who I messaged with and after validating accounts they put it in some queue or something. IIRC a day or two later it was all there. Magic.
Hasn't there always been a 10 user limit? That's what I remember at least.
Up to 100 users was a thing
Many more. I opened (and still have) a 500-user legacy account, and also have two 200-user accounts in case anyone is interested.
If Google wins, it will be a demonstration into how important it is to read terms of service.
I mean what if there was a clause in the original terms of service from all those years ago that said "free forever was not actually forever", and Google chose to stop being free today. What if it was always there and none of us noticed?
Did they advertise it as "free forever" or "free forever*"? Hiding the truth deep in the terms of service yet advertising something different shouldn't be legal.
What if a EULA revision includes terms that indemnify them from all claims resulting from false advertising?
Usually there’s a term that allows for the agreement to be changed.
I saw some talk of "class action" in previous threads. I'm REALLY skeptical. What I posted on Ars:
"Pitch" is not a contract. If you saved the terms of service when you signed up, please post it and show that Google promised that it would be available forever, for free. But it wasn't. Here's the actual Google Workspace (Free) Agreement [0]. You will note that, as is standard for online service contracts, they reserved the right to both modify the Service and Terms at any time ("1.2 Modifications") and it's expressly terminable at will (emphasis added): Quote: 10. Termination.
10.1 By Customer. Customer may discontinue use of the Service at any time.
10.2 By Google. Customer agrees that Google may at any time and for any reason terminate this Agreement and/or terminate the provision of all or any portion of the Service. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Google will provide at least thirty (30) days notice to Customer prior to terminating or suspending the Service; provided that the Service may be terminated immediately if (i) Customer has breached this Agreement or (ii) Google reasonably determines that it is commercially impractical to continue providing the Service in light of applicable laws.
10.3 Effects of Termination. If this Agreement terminates, then: (i) the rights granted by one party to the other will cease immediately (except as set forth in this Section); (ii) Google will provide Customer access to, and the ability to export, the Customer Data for a commercially reasonable period of time; and (iii) after a commercially reasonable period of time, Google will delete Customer Data by removing pointers to it on Google's active servers and overwriting it over time.
They've provided way more than 30 days, they're fine. Nobody sane promises forever but even if they do, contracts are governed by law and in general law (at least in the US) is very uncomfortable with perpetual contracts [1]. It's not always impossible to legally spell out perpetual but it usually has to be very specific and has serious requirements. There is lots of case law around this. An indefinite end term doesn't mean perpetual, on the contrary it is read as at-will since there is no end date. Google's ToS will be governed under California law and the 9th Circuit, and AFAIK it has to be specific there too, Shannon v. Civil Service Employees Ins. Union, 169 Cal. App. 2d 79, 337 P.2d 136, 138 (1959). [2]: Quote: Contracts for life or in perpetuity will only be upheld when the intention is clearly expressed in unequivocal terms, and courts are prone to hold against the theory that a contract infers a perpetuity of right or imposes a perpetuity of obligation, and they will only construe a contract to impose such an obligation when the written document itself compels the construction and none other. Contracts for life--and that is what is contended for here--are so unusual as to have been, with rare exceptions, condemned by the courts as unreasonable and unauthorized.
"Because of the unusual nature of life or perpetual agreements, the length and permanence of the obligation undertaken, the various unforeseeable events and conditions which may be encountered on such a journey in the future, and the unpredictable effects upon the parties, special precautions have been decreed essential, both as to consideration and the terms of employment, in construing and enforcing the compact. The responsibility assumed and the obligations imposed will be neither created nor spelled out by mere inference when they are not clearly and unequivocally expressed in the contract itself."
People on the internet have very weird ideas about law. Further, the remedy in civil law is about "making each party whole" and the courts in general loath specific performance. Normally remedy is about damages which can be covered with money. Maybe maybe maybe (not really) someone could squeeze out some switching cost, but no court is going to order Google to keep providing service that could be found elsewhere.
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0: https://web.archive.org/web/20201031044304/https://workspace...
1: https://privateequity.weil.com/glenn-west-musings/forever-lo...
2: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/2d/1...
As the article mentions, the suit would be about purchases (such as media or apps) tied to the account and identity. If google is forcing users to pay again to use things that users already paid for unless they subscribe to google's new plan, that sounds like a legitimate suit.
But Google isn't doing that. You aren't losing access to your purchases. So I'm still a little puzzled as to the grounds for this suit.
If I want to upgrade only one account, then I can't just "cancel" the service. This means I must delete all other accounts, losing purchases on them. It's an all or nothing thing.
Article seemed much broader complaints than just purchases, though of course it's second hand reporting of whatever the firm is actually going after. Purchases at least might plausibly represent damages. But I'm still extremely skeptical at this point that the whole "license" thing for software is going to switch back in a highly pro-consumer way. It sounds to me more like something that I (and many others) wish was mandated by law, but isn't. Google's ToS looks pretty normal, and everyone buying from them would be governed by it same as all the other software stores.
I wish them luck on that front at least, and morally it's really shitty for Google not to have a transfer mechanism for going between accounts. It is for Apple and everyone else like that too, absolute bullshit. And if it pressures Google to do the right thing even if they'd win then for once that'd be to the good. But while there is lots of outrage legally I'm still really skeptical.
Especially if Google's terms said "Google will provide Customer access to, and the ability to export, the Customer Data for a commercially reasonable period of time".
A class action might be effective even though the ToS explicitly stated they could do this. The lawsuit could easily be expensive enough that it might be cheaper for Google to just build a migration process than actually fight it.
> "Pitch" is not a contract.
But false advertising is definitely a thing one can sue over. And bait and switch might be subject to FTC fines.
>But false advertising is definitely a thing one can sue over
I'm sorry but no, a 2006 blog post or something (which itself had caveats fwiw) doesn't rise to the level of overriding clear ToS for an ongoing service. There was no bait-and-switch here in the slightest, people got what they (didn't) pay for, and could not reasonably rely on it being "forever" anyway. Perpetual contracts are a matter of actual long standing California law and long standing court coverage.
Google should in the next 6-18 months (July for the service, but apparently first year is free on signing up for paid?) figure out a better offramp. Congress should make purchase transfers within a service the law too, much more important surgical measure than some of the silliness they're going on about with platforms. But Google isn't going to face any "false advertising" or "bait and switch" fines for this and shouldn't.
It definitely should. It is externalizing an astronomical cost. I am not a lawyer, so I can't comment on the law. As a citizen in a democracy, I can comment on what the law ought to be, though.
The company is literally too big to fail or care. Break them up. Make search its own company, and most of the rest will almost surely completely die. And monitor acquisitions ruthlessly going forward.
So now that we need to migrate our families off, what are the best alternatives to Google for personal email / document / etc. accounts?
I've moved to MXRoute, just started setting it up yesterday. E-mail is the easier part to solve (it'll cost a bit, but MXRoute has unlimited domains/accounts/aliases, compared to others who charge 'by seat'). The larger problem is Docs, Sheets, and Forms. They don't allow you to change the owner to a non-domain Gmail account. So the plan of creating a regular free Gmail account and then moving everything over won't work. They've put the road blocks at the right places to force people who notice this all too late into upgrades.
A workaround that might work if you only care about not losing your custom email address:
Transfer your custom domain to Google Domains (you have to pay for your domain registration as usual), as they allow to set up free email forwarding to your free gmail account.
This only works if you just want to not lose your email address (as me). Of course this is not a solution if you also rely on calendar, docs, etc...
(*) and don't trust this forwarding is going to be free forever. They might come next year saying forwarding is $100 per message.
Those of us with the old Google Apps for Domains accounts (aka G Suite legacy accounts) don't particularly care about the email functionality. Email is portable, and there are plenty of equal or superior alternatives (based on your particular wants/needs).
The issue is that Google is dropping all other functionality associated with the accounts, particularly purchases made using these accounts, without the option to retain purchases if the domain administrator terminates the service instead of paying. (EDIT: there are other comments saying that Google's support page says that purchases can be accessed even after terminating the domain service. Redditors say otherwise. It appears that Google's support page has jumped the gun on intended functionality that doesn't actually exist yet.)
IOW: it's pay to keep your decade of purchases, or fuck you goodbye.
Crap like this is why I no longer invest in new Google products, and why I actively recommend alternatives to Google products (literally, "anything but Google") to friends and family who ask.
Your account doesn't disappear. I don't know what Redditors you're listening to but they don't seem to have the full picture.
What "intended" functionality are you waiting for here? The documentation exists today on what happens when you cancel Google Workspace: https://support.google.com/a/answer/1257646?hl=en
Google has handled messaging on this horribly. I, like many others, still haven't been officially told by Google.
The account owners may not, but a domain organizer can whack other accounts when they turn down the tenant.
The whole thing is a stupid, poorly conceived initiative which obviously wasn’t planned very well, since the comms from Google are so muddled.
> The issue is that Google is dropping all other functionality associated with the accounts, particularly purchases made using these accounts,
FWIW, the small handful of people I've mentioned this to are indeed more concerned about their purchases and SSO than their email.
It seems takeout is acceptable enough to assuade any email concerns, in their cases.
> FWIW, the small handful of people I've mentioned this to are indeed more concerned about their purchases and SSO than their email.
Purchases and SSO aren't going away (it sounds like what is happening is that the grandfathered free GSuite accounts are transitioning to Google Cloud Identity Free, which is basically GSuite minus the core GSuite apps.)
Well if they'd bother to read then they'd know they lose neither their purchases or SSO.
No, the problem is that the Google Docs say one thing (that purchases will not be lost) and people who have actually relied on the support documentation have found it not to match realty (i.e,. purchases were lost).
I absolutely care about migrating all my family members to another provider, which will involve somehow transferring GBs of existing emails. Not to mention paying individually for multiple accounts that will easily add up to hundreds of dollars a year.
I find amazing that any person smart enough to set one up thinks that anything can be free forever. Like they aren't dealing with revenue generating entity that might change their policies at any point... And justifiably so.
Well, at the time I felt it was clear that Google used this to push their brand, use the data for aggregated ad intelligence and would also utilize it to upsell into other products.
To say it's free, and then suddenly pull the carpet is something they may be able to do legally, but it is (hopefully) going to bring them the disaster they deserve. The cost of keeping those accounts at limited state and with locked features would be negligible compared to the loss in future revenue.
I've already been paying them $12/month for storage for years, mostly out of laziness, but at least Google One added sharing storage a year or so back so I could add my family.
If they added custom domains to Google One I might be tempted to keep it.
At this point I might just go over to Microsoft 365 family which has storage, custom domains and extra fluff, as far as I can tell, for cheaper than just the storage at Google.
Is outlook that bad?
Hadn't heard about the custom domains on 365, upon researching there is a limitation - "At the moment, we only support connecting domains managed by GoDaddy with Outlook.com" - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-personalize...
That limitation seems to just be a marketing thing - a few more searches reveal they do not actually check what registrar you use.
Outlook is that bad.
That said, at this point, starting from scratch, I'd pick it over Google in a heartbeat.