As our colleagues at MCPro reported a few days ago, Google will put an end to free Google Workspace accounts, better known until recently as G Suite, the Internet giant’s professional offer for professionals and companies. The date the current model changes will be the next May 1, although it will not start charging the corresponding rate until July 1. That time frame will be the one given by the company for each user to think about what to do.
As explained in the initial information, if by May 1 the user has not upgraded their account to the new Google Workspace payment plan, it will be done automatically, without interruption of service or loss of data, but without charging anything. although «the subscription that Google will apply it will not be the cheapest, but will go to the one that the company considers to be the most appropriate for the user based on the use made of Google services, “he advanced.
It will be from July 1 when Google begins to charge, as long as the user has provided the corresponding billing information. Once this step is done, you will also be able to choose a subscription type different from the one that the service has updated the account by default. The big question, until now, was what would happen to free Google Workspace accounts whose owners didn’t sign up for the new paid plan.
The matter is delicate, because beyond losing integration with the external domain that has been contracted, the main defining characteristic of the service, Google Workspace applications usually contain information that is as valuable as it is sensitive: emails, contacts, appointments, events and tasks, notes and documents , photos… It all depends on how many applications are used, of course. But if the matter is delicate, it is because at first it was said that the user who does not approve the update could lose his account.
Specifically, it was said that if the user “does not opt for a paid Google Workspace subscription after July 1 and does not provide his bank details so that Google charges him monthly for each user who uses his G Suite account, said account will cease to have some of its functions available. It will be suspended, which implies that its users will no longer be able to use some of its functions, although they will be able to access the account. After those 60 days, they will no longer have access to the main Google Workspace services: Gmail, Calendar and Meet. Its users will, yes, have access to YouTube and Google Photos.
It seems, however, that it will not be so in the end and users who choose not to pay for a Google Workspace subscription will be able to migrate to free accounts, the ones used by the average user and that revolve around Gmail, but are also based on the Workspace suite of services. Of course, they will lose the features associated with paid accounts, including integration with a custom domain; but they will not lose the most important thing: their data.
Having said that, it is worth mentioning that the basic Google Workspace account costs just over 5 euros per month and although it does not improve much the characteristics of a free account -for example, it barely increases the storage space from 15 to 30 GB- it does offer advantages that may be interesting for those who like Google for the quality of its software and service, but reject it for privacy reasons. I’ll leave it there, although it’s nothing exclusive to Google: companies always treat companies better than individuals and if they pay, even more.
