Google lastly launched an answer for individuals 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 soar 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 deal with.
The saga to this point, if you have not been following, is that Google has a custom-domain person account service, presently known as “Google Workspace” and beforehand known as “G Suite” and “Google Apps.” The service is usually a standard Google account that permits you to use an e mail that ends in your {custom} area identify quite than “@gmail.com.” Today this service is aimed toward companies and prices cash every month, however that was not at all times the case. From 2006 to 2012, {custom} area Google accounts had been free and had been even pitched at households as a geeky method to have a web-based Google id.
In January, some bean counter at Google apparently observed this tiny group of longtime customers was technically getting a paid service without spending a dime and determined this was unacceptable. Google posted an announcement in January declaring these individuals “Legacy G Suite users” and mainly advised 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 could ever be charged. Google held this decade-plus of person information hostage, telling customers to start out paying enterprise charges for Workspace or face an account shutdown.
Every week later, after the inevitable public outcry, Google relented considerably and stated vaguely that it could 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 can hold “most of your data” that you have been accumulating for 16 years is a quite 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 advised these customers what would occur to their accounts. The new help web 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 right 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 you need to contact help.
The largest information from this newest announcement is that Google has determined in opposition to taking individuals’s {custom} e mail away. A second help web 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 appears like there will probably be no adjustments to your account, offered you click on by way of the “self-transition” display earlier than the deadline.
The deadline to decide 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 mechanically billed for Workspace. If you do not have a card on file and do not decide out, your account will probably be suspended on August 1 and shut down.
The automated enrollment and billing, with out specific person consent, is likely one of the wilder elements of this story. If you do not carefully comply with the tech information scene, there is a good probability you will not know that is coming, and you’ll both instantly be billed with out your consent or discover that your Google account has instantly stopped working.
For an organization whose key enterprise pillar is convincing customers to retailer huge quantities of knowledge on its servers, enjoying video games like it is a weird determination. At least it got here to an affordable conclusion.
This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.
