For me, this raises the obvious question. How long a notice period is long enough? Six months? Eight? A year? Five years? A decade?
I think we can all agree that a decade would be an excessive and unreasonable expectation.
> By the same token, people have been using free Gmail accounts for a while now. What do you think the perception will be if Google asked them to pony up $60 a year with 5 months’ notice?
Probably about the same as if Google asked them to pony up $60 a year with a year's notice. Which is to say incredibly hostile because people have come to view free Gmail accounts as a basic public service for which no payment will ever be required under any circumstances.
which is called entitlement. And i'm seeing more and more of this sense of entitlement as more and more people (esp. young people) being exposed to the internet - and this seeps into their other lives offline.
Since I can remember email services across Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have been free. It is completely okay for us to expect that to continue as it has been around for so long. Now if you want perhaps more premium features, or access to the entire suite of product then yes it is expected you would need to pay.
Let's not act like providing users with free email hasn't been beneficial for these companies either.
Might want to research that one. Sonos “technology” here is the idea that multiple speakers can be adjusted by one knob… but the knob happens to be software.
As such, they have no justifiable reason not to expect user reactions reeking of entitlement.
>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).
http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-host...
Google should not set the wrong expectation right from the start. At that point in time, the impression I got is Google App is just a typical Gmail account with the additional feature of using custom domain with some administrative features.
And with what Google is doing today to Google Apps (now packaged as G Suite legacy free), there is nothing stopping Google from doing the same thing to the typical Gmail accounts as well.
Imagine you have been using your whatever@gmail.com for everything and is deeply integrated in you life. One fine day, Google bite back and also say you have to start paying to use whatever@gmail.com, how does it sound? We don't own the gmail.com domain and we will be held ransom to stay or lose the email address if we don't want to pay.
So are we also wrong to have the expectation of entitlement that the normal Gmail account will be forever free to us (i.e. provided Google is still around)?
Or you can call it bait and switch by the company.
Looking at it another way, Google's most recent net profit is $18.94 billion per quarter.
I have no idea but if there are 1 million G Suite Legacy accounts out there at $60 per year. That would increase their revenue $60 million per year.
So just assume all that revenue is net profit which would make their quarterly net profit go from $18.94 billion to $18.955 billion for the low cost of pissing off 1 million people.
If you STOP a service (or turn it to a PAID service) on short notice - and a service that is essential to people - then people will have to rush to find a solution... and will feel been extorted.
If you DEGRADATE the service more and more, people will slowly leave or upgrade to PAID, but they will have the choice.
Moreover, email is really a sensitive matter: it's a main point of contact for... well... email... but altogether for online service (IRS, website account, etc.) and in a way our digital life. So you can't just leave such a short notice. However, you have to let your FREE customer know that they have a choice to make quickly... so DEGRADATION is a good tradeoff I think
Most of us however we perfectly fine with the limited on the accounts... in reality if they just gave me the exact same level of service as they do the free gmail but with a custom domain I would be fine / happy. That is after all what the original service I signed up for was in the beginning.
I have no interest in Google Workspace, I want Gmail, Drive, and Identity. That is it. Maybe Photos... All of which they offer free to everyone still today just not with a custom domain
It doesn't mean anyone suggested it should be any of those lengths.
People need to assess the situation, evaluate existing solutions (including paying for the service), what needs to be done, etc. They're not doing it as their job, so do not necessarily know the current market offers.
Then they need to allocate time and resources to do the transition. Time, when the transition is the least disruptive, and the resources are usually availability if an in-house specialist. I know plenty of companies where upgrading a software take more than a year, with all their budgets, IT departments and external contractors. A typical G Suite user won't have all that expertise readily available.
That means that the transition will often require an IT enthusiast working in their free time. It's reasonable to assume that they will have at least one vacation per year to do that. So if the transition is ≥ 12 month, everyone and their mom should be able to do it.
If the transition is 3-5 months, I can see how it can be a problem even for commercial users with a dedicated task force.
My point: it doesn't matter how long they give us to switch - most people won't do it until they are absolutely forced.
This reminds me of Microsoft back in the day. Windows was (is?) crap, unreliable, and without the kindness of technical friends and relatives willing to work on someone's Windows issues for free, Microsoft may not have ever made it past DOS. I got sick of working on everyone's Windows problems so got rid of all my Windows machines and just told people "sorry, I don't have any Windows machines anymore and can't help you". And it was the truth - after about a year I really didn't know how to help them anymore! It's great!
Maybe it's time for technical people to stop working for free for Microsoft and Google. If their stuff is crap, let them sort it out with their wonderful customer service that you now have to pay for.
It's not 60 bucks a year for most of us, it's whatever the domain costs plus $6 per account times the number of accounts. In my case it's 720 dollars a year, which is more than it is worth.
