Google relents: you can keep your free legacy G Suite account for personal use

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve had a free G Suite account from Google for a number of years. I’ve used it only for normal free Google services, with the only significant bonus being that I have my own personal domain name instead of @gmail.com.

Several months ago, Google said they’re closing this down. It’s understandable to some extent: they are selling a business service and want to make money. But many of these accounts were used by individuals or families that just wanted their own domain name. Google was going to start charging several dollars per month per user. That sucks for families with lots of members and could have run to thousands per year. And Google initially advertised the free G Suite version to just these types of people, so it feels like they were breaking a promise. Especially since people may have all kinds of things tied to that account, like YouTube uploads.

Anyway, Google finally relented and allowed purely personal accounts to continue with a free edition. Yay! Let no one say that Google doesn’t eventually do the right thing once they have exhausted all alternatives.

Instructions here:

And the specific link you need.

2

Ah, this would be why my school is switching from Google to Outlook, then.

Never mind that it’s probably going to break several dozen things.

3

Could be, though it looks like they have a special free education version:

Though there’s a free Office 365 version as well, and possibly your school favors Office for document compatibility, etc.

And yeah, all this account changing breaks so many things these days. That was probably the worst aspect of the Google nonsense–my account really is tied to everything. Don’t tell them, but I was going to start paying for it, just because they effectively had me over a barrel. $100/yr or whatever it was is cheap compared to transitioning everything to another system. But I’m just one user and I can justify that. That’s less true for a large family.