It was free for 10 accounts. The number one massively applicable use case vs plain google accounts was vanity domain names and signing up was no harder than creating a regular gmail account. There are probably more vanity domain users than small businesses with 10 people. In fact I would venture to guess with the 10 address limit they are nearly 100% of the remaining users on the legacy program.
The cost of the domain name is $10 per domain per year or $1 per person per year little enough for one person to pay without thinking.
Most people keep an email address for a very very long time rarely switching unless a service ceases to exist.
Almost no domain owners are going to pony up $720 per year themselves and collection from other users will be an untenable hassle.
Basically every bullet point you listed is wrong. The remaining pool of users is likely 99% vanity users who would have used Gmail+custom domain forever at no real cost to Google over free Gmail none of which will migrate to Google workspace.
For Google the gain from this change will be identical to picking n random Gmail accounts and canceling them and keeping those users digital purchases as a giant fu.
Not ruinous but hardly profitable either.
Someone with an ounce of sense would have included the option to migrate all email accounts to regular Gmail accounts.
It was free for unlimited accounts (I still have a G Suite Legacy account that was grandfathered into that) at first.
Eventually unlimited free accounts was dropped to 50, in 2009 (my grandfathered account was soft-capped at that, with the option to reach out to support to increase it), but I had several other domains that were hard-capped at 50 since I opened them after that limit was instituted. [1]
Then that limit was dropped from 50 to 10 (hard capped, grand-fathered accounts kept their old limits) in 2011. [2]
Then last but not least there was the 1 user free if you had a Google AppEngine project (that came with the requirement that it was tied to a G-Suite at the time).
My G Suite legacy accounts were all created in 2007-2010 timeframe.
No email here. Mine is from the very early days, pretty much as soon as it became available as Google Apps for Domains. I have a 200 user cap because I requested more than whatever the default was. I have a total of 3 active accounts, everything else is just a forwarder.
I use it as a forwarder to my gmail, but now I have to migrate my parents off their accounts. It will either end up as Gmail or Outlook.com for them. Migrating their email will be annoying.
I maintain a full GSuite Business account for other purposes, so I can use that as my mail relay service.
Thanks to routing rules, they'll continue to receive emails transparently, it will redirect a copy to their new email, as if they were a BCC.
I'll handle the groups the same, only a few and the routing rule can add 100 recipients.
Eventually, once cloudflare email forwarding supports groups, I'll just move to that. It's on their internal roadmap, so maybe it will happen before 2024.
"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)."
The original version of the TOS from August 2006 read as follows:
"16. Modification. Except as provided in Section 17, Google reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement or any policy governing Google Apps, at any time, by posting the new agreement at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/terms.html or such URL as Google may provide. Customer is responsible for regularly reviewing any updates to this Agreement. Any changes or modifications to this Agreement will become binding (i) when made in a writing executed by both parties, (ii) by Customer's online acceptance of updated terms, or (iii) after Customer's continued use of Google Apps after such terms have been updated by Google."
"17. No Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer Google Apps for Your Domain to Customer, Google will continue to provide a version of Google Apps for Your Domain (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 Google Hosted Services are considered a beta service (the "Beta Period") by Google (such Beta Period determination at Google's sole discretion) and (ii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Google Apps for Your Domain in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of Google Apps for Your Domain for a fee."
In mid 2007 the language was changed to read the following:
"17. Modification. Except as provided in Section 18, Google reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this Agreement or any policy governing the Service, at any time, by posting the new agreement at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/terms.html or such URL as Google may provide. Customer is responsible for regularly reviewing any updates to this Agreement. Any changes or modifications to this Agreement will become binding (i) when made in a writing executed by both parties, (ii) by Customer's online acceptance of updated terms, or (iii) after Customer's continued use of the Service after such terms have been updated by Google."
"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) does not apply to the Domain Service described in Section 4 above; and (ii) 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."
This version was persisting thru at least March of 2011:
I have received The Email for domains set up with Google Apps on 2007-09-08 and 2007-10-08 (got the emails on Jan. 20 and 27 respectively), but not for domains set up on 2007-07-03 or 2012-01-24. I think they're still getting around to it.
I have not received an email, but logging in to the account there's a notice now that tells me about the impending changes.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's finally time to migrate away, I've been putting it off, but so far the accounts I created seem to have mostly become dormant, so only one user has to change, and I'll just re-create them an IMAP account for their mail, they don't use any other services.
> Basically every bullet point you listed is wrong. The remaining pool of users is likely 99% vanity users who would have used Gmail+custom domain forever at no real cost to Google over free Gmail none of which will migrate to Google workspace.
Why do any of your issues in any way contribute to the decision wherever someone should invest their time to create a migration tool so users can switch from the old legacy product to a free account which doesn't have any of the domain features to begin with?
I get that you're unhappy that Google discontinues their free service for you, but that wasn't what the discussion was about.
My point was that you listed 3 factors and asserted that the overlap in a venn diagram would have little overlap. In fact the venn diagram ought to look more like a circle.
All users who signed up for google apps at your domain are in A people who initially signed up. People in B are those who haven't switched away. C are those who are unwilling to pay $72 per user per year.
A->B Very few users change email addresses very frequently because we accumulate 100 or even hundreds of pages with signups under a single address, phones set up under our google account, oauth sign ins, apps and games purchased under our google account. Google accounts are much more sticky than regular email accounts and people rarely abandon those. I would venture to guess the list of active accounts in B is most of A.
B->C Very few people who signed up for $10 a year for 10-50 addresses are going to be onboard with paying between $720 and $3600 a year. C includes 99.9% of B.
You're forgetting the circle of ageing techies that used to use AltaVista and now (in)directly control large budgets, have long memories and significant clout when it comes to guiding our replacements into making the right decisions and educating them about corporate (mis)trust.
I'm in that circle. I've cost Google millions of dollars in business due to a history of similar dick moves on their part. This adds just one more to the list. The organization I work at will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever consider using Google for anything business-critical, and neither will businesses I advise in various roles.
I have at least a dozen relatives on my Google family domain. We're looking at a lifetime cost of tens of thousands of dollars if I were to switch to Workspace, which is a non-starter.
One possibility is to finally incorporate my family foundation as a 501(c)3, if we can do that in time. It's been on my to do list.
I'm not even sure where to go from here, but I have things like Android apps I've bought on this account, as does my family. Or I guess the word is "rented." I have a bunch of logins with Google OAuth. Or I guess past tense.
I feel like there's a class action in here somewhere.
Uh, why do they matter in the context of a potential side project to let people migrate their Mails from the discontinued free legacy project to a free private account?
but the venn diagram overlap of people
will be tiny