After fighting tooth and nail to retain access to G Suite’s legacy free tools instead of being moved to a paid Google Workspace plan after an announcement in January 2022, some Google users got a fright recently.
G Suite was a free iteration of Workspace, Google’s collaboration software, offering free email hosting, and, crucially, custom domains, from 2006 to 2012. Accounts created during this period are currently “grandfathered” into the service, meaning their owners don’t have to pay any additional fees while retaining all the benefits.
After Google backtracked on making users start to pay for Workspace in 2022, G Suite users had to pinky promise to Google that they did not intend to use their account for business use and, after that, the matter seemed settled.
Legacy G Suite transitions, or lack thereof
In February 2023, however, a notification claiming that “the transition to Google Workspace has started” began to appear for users, implying that the tech giant had begun to backtrack on its backtrack.
Users were initially confused, but, thankfully, this appears to be a mistake. A Google spokesperson claimed in a statement to Ars Technica (opens in new tab) that the issue is a bug, and that “those who previously opted-in for personal use are not expected to take any further action.”
Even so, the notification, when clicked, appears to refer to a new service, “Google Workspace for personal use”, which does not exist.
The same Google spokesperson also confirmed that users were unintentionally seeing beta branding for the intention to scrap legacy G Suite accounts last year, and so the whole debacle seems to be a wild goose chase – until the idea pops into their head again, presumably.
