Google ends the G Suite legacy free edition leaving users worried

G Suite legacy free edition was a free edition of Google's G Suite offering that customers could sign-up for prior to December 6, 2012. Google announced recently that it will end support for the G Suite legacy free edition and that customers will have to subscribe to a paid plan to continue using Google services.

G Suite legacy free edition had a limited set of business features, but it was free and users could sign-up for the service. Google stopped offering the service on December 6, 2012, but customers who signed up for it prior to that were allowed to use it after the deadline.

Nearly a decade later, Google is ending support for the G Suite legacy free edition. The decision affects all customers who signed-up for it, especially those who used it continuously.

Google plans to migrate all G Suite legacy free edition customers to Google Workspace starting May 1, 2022. Users will then be able to use the service at no cost until July 1, 2022.

If you have the G Suite legacy free edition, you need to upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to keep your services. The G Suite legacy free edition will no longer be available starting May 1, 2022. Starting May 1, Google will seamlessly transition you to Google Workspace, which you can use at no cost until July 1, 2022.

Plans start at $6 for individual accounts, but since G Suite legacy free supported multiple users, some users may have to pay more to keep all their user accounts, e.g. for family members.

Customers who don't want to subscribe to Google Workspace should use the data export tool to export their data.

The problem

Some customers have used the service as their main driver on the Internet, meaning they used the associated email address to sign-up for websites and services, make purchases online and on Google Play, and for all communication purposes via email.

While it is possible to migrate some of that to another service, e.g. Google Drive to local storage or another provider, it is unclear at this point how Play Store apps purchases are handled, but it appears that there is no option to migrate those to another account.

Additionally, users who signed-up for dozens or hundreds of sites over the course of the decade may need to spend quite some time changing the logins to another email address.

Google ends the G Suite legacy free edition leaving users worried