Enlarge / An artist's rendering of Google's current reputation. (credit: Aurich Lawson)
Google says the free ride is over for early users of the company's custom domain G Suite service. Google has long offered a service that lets you use Google apps on a custom domain, allowing you to have a Google email address that ends in your domain instead of "gmail.com." For the first six years of the service's life, the basic tier allowed you to create a custom domain account for free. Now, you have to pay for the privilege of using a custom domain with a Google account. Google turned off the ability to create these accounts for free in 2012, but it wouldn't take away accounts from existing users, would it?
It would.
As 9to5Google was the first to report, Google will shut down free G Suite accounts if the account holder doesn't transition to a paid account. Google is sending out emails to users of "G Suite legacy free edition" accounts, telling them they have until July 1 to start paying. A support page details how this process will work. Starting May 1, Google will try to automatically "upgrade" users to a paid account if it has available billing information. If there is no such information by July, accounts will be "suspended." After 60 days, those accounts will lose access to "core" Google services like Gmail and Calendar.
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