After 15 years, Google is ending free access to its G Suite, which started out as "Google Apps For Your Domain." In practical terms for people like me, it was just Gmail using my own popw.com domain. This is a pretty serious bummer, because if I want to continue using it, it's $6 per user per month. In addition to me, Diana and Simon, a number of friends and family members are using it, one of which is my mom, and I can't easily expect her to switch to something else.
First off, this seems cosmically stupid to me because, again, in real terms, I'm just using Gmail with a custom domain. That doesn't really cost them anything extra. Second, and this is the part that's far worse for a great many people, that account is basically the core of your identity, on every Google service. For whatever reason, I instinctively have always used a Gmail account for that sort of thing (my Android phone, apps from the Play Store, etc.), but a great many people have not. Now, in order to just keep access to whatever they bought, they need to pay for the G Suite account forever because there's no way to transfer those purchases. That's messed up. I imagine people also use it for third-party authentication on any number of services that allow you to do so. Again, the footprint can be enormous.
My suspicion is that they'll push out the end date, because almost everything that Google has ended (like the shitty end to Google Music) ended up lingering. I don't think they've fully thought any of this through, and the identity issue in particular is at the very least troublesome, and potentially the kind of thing that will result in a class action by some enterprising lawyer. Google has never said, "Don't use your free G Suite identity to buy this, because it might not be free forever." This is the entire problem with DRM. Admittedly, it's a little better with movies now that Movies Anywhere acts as a synchronization bridge between all the services, but I don't really know if those hundreds of dollars of movies will really be "mine" forever.
This is pretty shitty overall, because as you know, Google's business is to make you the product. In return for being the product, it's assumed that you're gonna get some things in return for that. I get enterprises paying for G Suite, with more storage and retention and security features, but for a family using their own domain name, none of this is otherwise functionally different from having a Gmail account. And the thing is, if there was some kind of family option at $100 a year or something, I would pay for that, but it doesn't exist. They have Google One, which I already pay for to augment photo storage, but it can't do custom domains.
So what about competing services? Microsoft has its 365 service, which is similar, but it's the same price starting in March, so I'm not sure there's much of a win there. They do have a family offering, and it's only $20 for six people through employee friend channels. Unfortunately, it doesn't do custom domain names, so that's not an option.
Way back in the day, when I started running my own server in 2001, I doubled it as a mail server. I spent $150 on the software, but it was a pretty great arrangement. I switched to the Google in 2006 and was happy to not have to mess with it anymore.
We'll see if Google changes its mind, but I doubt it. My love-hate relationship with Google is definitely slanting toward the hate again, after they just made up some ground with the outstanding Pixel 6 phone.
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