S2E20: GSuite Legacy Free Edition is here to stay! YES, that includes Gmail at your custom domain! 🎉 Improved Working location UI in Calendar, Search Meet Content in Drive, and more

Intro

It’s official! Great news for all GSuite Legacy Free Edition Folks, Google is letting us keep our accounts! The last few months have been an emotional roller coaster, and I think Google owes us some anti stress swag or something because wow was this tough. I am going to make TShirts that say I survived the GSuite Legacy Shutdown and you can all buy them to commemorate the occasion. Google officially announced today that they are allowing us to keep using our GSuite Legacy Free accounts for personal non commercial use, including Gmail and yes, your custom domain. Many of you who followed today’s news as it was breaking already sent in a bunch of questions and we are working to get those answered, but for tonight, we will talk about what we know so far.Here are this week’s updates:

Silent Releases

New idle status in Google Chat

Changes to the default Host Management controls in Google Meet for users with personal accounts

Published Releases

Other Topics

Customer Connect Live event, “Google Drive Sharing - Product Q&A” with Google Product Manager, Ned Lindau. Register here!
- Wednesday, 5/25 from 8:30-9:30am PST
1. Workspace Roadmap feedback Form sent to me by a Googler to get eyes on and feedback
2. We are going to skip IO Workspace Announcements for tonight… Too much to talk about for GSuite Free
3. G Suite Free
Google Announced G Suite Free Edition Skipping the waitlist for the no cost option…..
Link to upgrade directly: https://admin.google.com/?action_id=SE_SELF_TRANSITION
You will be able to continue using your custom domains, as well as Gmail, the Editors, Drive, Meet, Maps, Youtube, and maintain access to purchases on Google Play such as Movies, Music, etc. We don’t yet know what “personal use” means, but we are working on finding out. We do know that it will not include support.
The Support article where this was originally announced and has been updated all along as also been updated with today’s details: https://support.google.com/a/answer/60217
If you had previously updated your account to Google Workspace before January 19th 2022, you should contact support to switch back.
The support article states that “G Suite Legacy free edition is only intended for personal non commercial use. If you’re using G Suite legacy free edition for business purposes, we will transition your account to Google Workspace.”
That sounds ominous, and we are digging in to see if we can clarify what would quantify business purposes, although generally non commercial means anything that is not used to generate money.
As far as how many users will be allowed on the free plan, currently they have not mentioned a limit. I have switched one of my legacy accounts over to the free plan and had no issue adding a new user. I still show in my billing dashboard that I have 41 available licenses, which I already had from many years ago. It is unknown at this point if those with only a few accounts will be able to add as many as needed or if they will be capped at 10.

Workspace Recap is the only show dedicated to and discussing all of the changes happening in Google Workspace on a weekly basis, as well as how all these changes affect our users and our businesses. Google Workspace is innovating at a breakneck pace, making it difficult to keep up and keep track. Join us each week as we discuss What’s New in Google Workspace, Upcoming Google Workspace releases, and answer your questions.

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