Google lastly launched an answer for folks with “legacy” G Suite Google accounts. After initially threatening to close down free G Suite accounts if customers did not begin paying for the service, Google has utterly backed off. Once customers bounce by way of some sign-up hoops, Google will enable their ~16-year-old accounts to proceed functioning. You’ll even get to maintain your e-mail handle.
The saga up to now, if you have not been following, is that Google has a custom-domain consumer account service, at the moment referred to as “Google Workspace” and beforehand referred to as “G Suite” and “Google Apps.” The service is generally a standard Google account that allows you to use an e-mail that ends in your {custom} area title relatively than “@gmail.com.” Today this service is geared toward companies and prices cash every month, however that was not all the time the case. From 2006 to 2012, {custom} area Google accounts were free and have been even pitched at families as a geeky approach to have an internet Google id.
In January, some bean counter at Google apparently observed this tiny group of longtime customers was technically getting a paid service without cost and determined this was unacceptable. Google posted an announcement in January declaring these folks “Legacy G Suite users” and principally instructed them, “Pay up or lose your account.” These customers signed up for a free Google service and saved information on it for so long as 16 years, and there have been no indications it will ever be charged. Google held this decade-plus of consumer information hostage, telling customers to begin paying enterprise charges for Workspace or face an account shutdown.
Every week later, after the inevitable public outcry, Google relented somewhat and mentioned vaguely that it will ultimately present “an option for you to move your non-Google Workspace paid content and most of your data to a no-cost option.” Saying you’ll hold “most of your data” that you have been accumulating for 16 years is a relatively alarming assertion. Google’s one little bit of specifics in January was that “this new option won’t include premium features like custom email,” so that you’d should cease internet hosting your e-mail with Google, and also you’d presumably should undergo some wild Google account conversion course of. It then let these customers anxiously flap within the wind, with no additional particulars, for six months.
How to Save Your Free G Suite Account
In May, Google lastly instructed these customers what would occur to their accounts. The new support page says, “For individuals and families using your account for non-commercial purposes, you can continue using the G Suite legacy free edition and opt out of the transition to Google Workspace.” The hyperlink for that’s here or in your G Suite admin panel. You’ll want to verify that your G Suite account is for private use, and never enterprise use, as a result of companies are nonetheless anticipated to pay for Workspace. If you already bent to Google’s will and began paying for Workspace due to the January announcement, Google says it is best to contact support.
The largest information from this newest announcement is that Google has determined in opposition to taking folks’s {custom} e-mail away. A second support page says, “You can continue using your custom domain with Gmail, retain access to no-cost Google services such as Google Drive and Google Meet, and keep your purchases and data.” It now seems like there shall be no adjustments to your account, supplied you click on by way of the “self-transition” display screen earlier than the deadline.
The deadline to choose out of an account shutdown, which has modified a number of occasions now, is June 27, 2022. If you do not full this opt-out by June 27, you’ll be routinely billed for Workspace. If you do not have a card on file and do not choose out, your account shall be suspended on August 1 and shut down.
The computerized enrollment and billing, with out specific consumer consent, is without doubt one of the wilder components of this story. If you do not intently comply with the tech information scene, there is a good probability you will not know that is coming, and you’ll both out of the blue be billed with out your consent or discover that your Google account has out of the blue stopped working.
For an organization whose key enterprise pillar is convincing customers to retailer huge quantities of knowledge on its servers, taking part in video games like it is a weird determination. At least it got here to an inexpensive conclusion.
This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.
