By now, you’ve probably owned up to the fact that G Suite Legacy accounts are going away and you’re going to have to pay $5/head/month because you want a custom domain.  Maybe you’ve even converted over – in fact, there’s a good chance since Google has been saying that July 1 was doomsday.

But if you’ve been lazy about the whole thing, your sloth has been rewarded!  At least, if you have a personal Gmail account.

Per this support note:

“If you’re using the G Suite legacy free edition for non-commercial purposes, you can opt out of the transition to Google Workspace…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.”

And again, they emphasize that free is for non-commercial, personal use only:

“G Suite legacy free edition is only intended for personal non-commercial use. If you’re using G Suite legacy free edition for business purposes, we will transition your account to Google Workspace. G Suite legacy free edition does not include support, and in the future we may remove certain business functionality.”

My suspicion is that Google staffers themselves were the only vocal group that Google cared enough about to relent.  Many of them, quite naturally, use Gmail and since they’re more tech-savvy than the average bear, it’s not surprising they have custom domains.  This represents a new cost for some of them, and it’s likely to add up to $50-100 a month when you think about an engineer, spouse, kids, maybe grandma and some uncles, etc.  Enough that the engineer is going to complain about it and often it’s these kinds of small unexpected charges that really grind employees.  For the sake of morale, Google probably said fine, we’ll leave it free, because the hassle of making it an employee-only perk and sorting it when people join or leave Google was probably seen as too much of a hassle.

Note that if you want to stay on free, you need to take action.  “If you don’t take any action, your account will be suspended starting on August 1, 2022.”  See the support note for what you need to do.

But of course, that’s just my speculation.  So, did you:

• already move to a non-Google service?
• move to a paid account but now plan to move back to free?
• been lazy and now you’re going to stay on free?

Let us know in the comments below!

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.