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Comment by Oletros | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't work with Google Apps accounts, fail

Does anyone have a solution for old users of Google Apps (back when it was called Google Apps For My Domain) that just want it to be like a regular Google account but keep their email address?

It's very frustrating that everything Google does may or may not work for those of us that just use Google Apps like a regular google account. I don't use any of the organization features. I don't manage a collection of users. All I wanted was a GMail account with my domain like Google originally offered. I feel like a second class citizen in Google's ecosystem because of my Google Apps account.

I'm not even sure what would happen if I tried switch this account to a regular Google account. Google used to (and maybe they still do) allow you to use any email address for your google account but if you wanted to use GMail you needed an @gmail.com address. If I bit the bullet and switched to a @gmail.com account could I keep my data and Play store purchases? I'm guessing the answer to that is "no" so not only would I have to lose my email address, I might have to repurchase quite a bit. Can you import all of your data from one account to another using Takeout?

My dream is that Google will offer a "Make this a regular Google account" button. I don't want to change the email address I've used for 15 years just because Google pulled the rug out from under me after getting me to switch to Google apps.

There was a feature in testing to do something like this [0]. I'm not really sure what happened to it or if it will ever be released, but it seems to be the answer to what many people want.

[0] http://bgr.com/2015/07/23/google-gmail-custom-email-address/

I don't think they'll ever have such a button. What I'm doing is auto-forwarding all mail from GApps to my regular Gmail account. And as I added the GApps account as an outgoing account/identity in Gmail, I can send/receive from my regular Gmail account, but with it showing the GApps custom domain address in all my emails. If you did this, at least you could still keep your GApps email adress even if you started over with everything else (purchases, etc).

Features like these traditionally do not work with Google Apps accounts. Adding your hotel reservation confirmations to your calendar or notifying you of package delivery? Nope. Anything else Google Now could use? Nope. Google doesn't read you Apps account, like they do with the regular ones.

I would pay for an option to let them read it. I just want a regular schmuck's Google account with my own domain for email. Keep charging me $5/mo, get rid of the SLA, just let me use what I want to use.

as a hack, you can use a regular gmail address and forward all your emails to that address. you can also respond from a regular gmail address to your abc@yourname.com by changing the from field (you have to verify you own the email address). currently using a similar setup, custom email address but responding from a regular gmail address

Yeah this workaround has existed for a while, but that means that your outbound mail will have "you@custom.com via you@gmail.com", or similar. If I recall correctly it also causes problems when responding from mail clients that aren't made by Google but I could be wrong there.

It's a frustrating situation, but it's low on my list right now. I keep holding out hope that one day they'll make it right while warning people away from the same situation.

Eh, a lot of those things work with Google App accounts like Hotel Reservations, Flights or Amazon purchases

Well, it doesn't work with mine. No Amazon or eBay purchases, no flights, no parcel notifications, nothing...

I'm very disappointed with being unable to use so many Google apps. Has anyone recently transitioned from a Google Apps account to a regular Google account? Yup, I'm considering it..

It's not an option for me. I have so much attached to my Apps account that it would be a net loss. Email is one thing, but domains, purchases, my YouTube account, Maps reviews, etc. are different stories.

At this point I've just given up. Google has no desire to make Apps accounts usable with any of their new products so I just ignore them. Google Now doesn't really have a counterpart but Siri can handle some of the same aspects, such as sending messages and minor searches, but unlike Now it can read my email. Apple Photos and/or Facebook moments serves mostly the same purpose as Google Photos. Instead of Google Play music's family plan I use Spotify. Google Fi is neat but I'm happy with T-Mobile. I don't travel often enough to care for a Trips competitor.

Can you really not use all those services with a Google Apps account? That seems insane to me! Those are so many services!!

I do have two Google Apps accounts. Luckily I only ever used them for email.

This Trips app, Fi, family sharing, their "spaces" app are all locked out. You can use Google now but it won't use anything but search history to customize.

It's mind boggling.

My favorite part is that Google Now's email integration (which this likely builds off of) doesn't work with Apps accounts yet it does work with Yahoo and Outlook.com accounts [1].

[1]: https://gmail.googleblog.com/2016/02/gmailify-best-of-gmail-...

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