Saturday 21 May 2022

The Return of Google Apps Free Accounts

 Google did finally walk back the end of the grandfathered free GA accounts and thenibble.org is now "Free Legacy Edition of G Suite for personal use". Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Thursday 20 January 2022

The End of Google Apps Free Accounts

The Nibble Google Apps account will be shutting down as Google has posted that they are ending the G Suite legacy free edition (formerly Google Apps free tier) and anyone left on that free ride has to pay or get the hell out. Specifically:

"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."

Going back through the posts, the nibble moved to Google Apps back in December, 2009. It's been a great service as a freebie mainly because it has run for so long with pretty minimal issues (i.e. features going away or breaking).

Get a Takeout backup of all your stuff ASAP and start transitioning off of Google Services that are in the GA account.

The @thenibble.org email we can set in Google Domains to Forward your emails. Currently working on a more specific instruction to migrate - but at a high level

  1. Start forwarding your email in your account
  2. Setup your @thenibble.org as an alias in your @gmail account 
  3. Import mail from your Google Apps / Workspace (+ "profit" ?)

Don't forget your Contacts!

Files in Google Drive should be readily movable. 

Browser history, bookmarks, passwords, all that stuff is all readily movable.

Blogger (this site included) is quick to update account access

  1. Invite your @gmail.com (or other acct) as an author
  2. Accept the invite
  3. Promote the account from Author to Admin

Google Sites *poof* gone. Copy content over to Blogger.com pages / posts. Edit - not quite gone, sites still a thing but content isn't so easy to move, so simple sites should be re-created.

Any Online sites and services you use tied to your Google Apps account you'll have to change over to something else. Mostly I went with stand-alone accounts like a separate login for each since it's all in the password manager anyhow the integration wasn't doing anything other than hoovering my Google account info into third-party services. 

-> Notably thenibble.org domain registration in Google Domains both the admins were Google Apps accounts. Almost missed that and that would have really been a major #fail

Ciao

Dom617b