Before Google kills free Gsuite accounts, why not offer a family email plan? | Hacker News Reader

Before Google kills free Gsuite accounts, why not offer a family email plan?

arstechnica.com

44 pointstakiwatanga17 comments

Because Google is only vaguely aware that their products are human beings. I say products because they treat you like one even if you pay them. It’s their corporate culture.

I can’t upgrade from the free tier to the paid tier because I don’t live in the United States. No problem, just change your billing country you say? I can’t, because I’m on a free tier and there is no billing setup to change!

Can I get help? Sure! Paid support is available, but I can’t set up paid support because of the above reasons. I just get a terrible bot that links me to the KB article with the screenshot of something I can’t see when I go to the portal.

Now I’m facing termination of my account, so I just downloaded everything and I plan to switch to something else.

PS: this isn’t just happening at the small, individual scale. I’ve personally been involved in many huge enterprise migrations from GSuite to Office 365. The lack of caring from Google was cited as a major motivation by several such customers…

I was in the same situation as you - I couldn't upgrade because I'm not in the US. But there is the ability to get a support chat (after going through a couple of bot suggestions) - and they quickly took me through a different route to change billing country (even though I was, like you, on the legacy free version with no billing to date).

I've set up a one-user paid-for account for the time being, but the whole "rug-pull" has left a bad taste and I'll be on the lookout for an alternative solution from here on.

Is anyone interested in creating a Gmail clone service which let's you bring your own domain for free?

That is all I want. I'd even pay a small annual fee, but not $18/user/mo. Fuck google, for reneging on the arrangement after 14+ years.

If I'd known they'd come to behave as if their name was actually Greedle, I'd never have allowed them to become so ubiquitously integrated into my life. It's an abusive relationship, yet there is a fair amount of friction to switch to something else.

> Fuck google, for reneging on the arrangement after 14+ years.

FWIW, 14 years is a great time to get something for free. Should they have a cheaper family plan? Yes. Should they have grandfathered in existing subscribers for free? Sure, why not? But expecting that they provide a free service, forever seems a bit much.

Is google hurting for cash or resources? No. Are us little guys currently being nickel and dimed until we're nice and emaciated? Yes.

Pandemic.

Inflation.

Rising taxes.

War.

And Google chooses now to start milking us even more. Despite the reality being that it is us, the users, who are the real product.

Google top brass: What a disgusting and merciless bunch. Turns out the goal of "user delight" was just a carrot to trick the engineers to build the machine.

> But expecting that they provide a free service, forever seems a bit much

It's not free however you want to paint it so. You are a product there and you have a service in exchange of a permission to use their service.

They stated in writing this is free. There was nothing about it going away after 14 years. It’s understandable if the product ceases to exist. But besides technicalities, the product is obviously still Alive.

If we aren’t to except the service for free, then should we assume everything Google says is a lie? What am I to expect when Google says something concrete

This is not like other killed products where a promise of free serbice was stated. And the product isn’t being killed off just upgraded.

> Is anyone interested in creating a Gmail clone service which let's you bring your own domain for free?

Assuming this is because you really like the Gmail app, you could check email from and send email as your other email accounts. Cloudflare Email Routing might be helpful for this as well: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-email-routing/

Have you looked at fastmail? Custom domain is supported on a $5/user/month plan and they seem well known and well regarded.

https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/

Migadu seems to be a better deal, and unlike Fastmail it's neither Australian nor American, which is good for privacy.

Hey! You should check out Zillum- a family email and collaboration service, with a custom domain. https://www.zoho.com/zillum/ I work for Zoho, and I am obviously a little biased towards an offering like this from them, but honestly it works great for my own personal family accounts, with the same robustness and security of the business apps.

I can’t find this info anywhere, does anyone know if I can keep everything but email and keep using the accounts as they are? I’m happy to move email to another provider but I can’t move decade of google play purchases.

You can convert the account to a normal gmail account

Maybe. See this link.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217

I have one of these free accounts and I still haven’t received an email from google about this ending. Is anybody else in the same situation?

Are you the admin?

I've received several emails about it, and there's a message at the top of https://admin.google.com/

If you aren't the admin, see the FAQ at the bottom of https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217

I am the admin. The message didn't show up on https://admin.google.com when I posted this, but it showed up today. So much more the hope that I somehow fell through the cracks.

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