Google could face class action lawsuit over free G Suite legacy account shutdown (opens in new tab)

I 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.

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.

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.

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 want to understand why I've still not been notified.

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.

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 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.

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?

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.

----

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...

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?

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...

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.

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.

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?