Techies: Woe is me! End of free personal use domain email addresses in Google G-Suite/Workspace

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Calling all techies!

Many moons ago (well over than a decade, if I remember), google offered lots of free email accounts and other account-related services added into domain hosting.

Apologies for the length of what follows. : (

Let me get this next out up front:

I know that when I don’t know who the mark is in various circumstances, it’s often or usually true that the mark is me.
I know that, apart from a few services [as, perhaps, with wikipedia]: if something is free, then I am the product being sliced, diced, packaged, and sold.

I understood all that, in a more limited way, all those years ago, when I signed up. I didn’t understand it well enough; but what’s done is done.
I’ve become far more conscious of this issue, and am off FB, Instagram, and much else, over queasiness on this issue. I’m not requesting lectures unless someone really really really wants to. I already get that I made a questionable decision.

I get that I haven’t yet divorced self from Google and prob never fully will (Android, etc). I get that Google knows so much about everyone who ever had a gmail account that we can’t even imagine the scope of that info dump.

So:
I signed up for a domain set it up with G-Suite or whatever they called it back then; and I have used these services ever since, strictly for personal use. I have currently about 20 domain email accounts set up, all for me:
it was convenient to me to have various separate email addresses for various uses (medical, shopping, banking, insurance, account recovery, school, work, personal use, and various email list fancies I didn’t want mixed into the normal stuff. Made it easier for me to find or keep track of stuff that matters.
(Also made it easier for me to be an email hoarder who never cleans anything out, btw.)

In Jan this year, as everyone who follows the tech world knows, Google announced the end of the free G-Suite/Workspace services (email and everything else).

We would all have to start paying, by the email address. Decisions needed by May, mandatory changeover this summer. Pay up or be locked out of your email.
$6/month/address is the cheapest they are offering as I recall. So $120/month for me if I kept all my email addresses with Google workspace, and agreed to pay up.
Of course, I won’t pay anything like that (more on that later).

And Google was shocked, shocked, by the pushback and legal threats (since so many of these freebie workspace domain setups were, as mine is, simply for personal use);
and Google acted like they didn’t know that. Even tho they are Google and they know everything.
Yeah. Sure, Google.

[one potential legal action info page is here:
https://chimicles.com/google-legacy-g-suite-class-action-investigation/#tab-id-2]

Potential justification for lawsuits:
Google used some pretty suggestive “free forever” type language when they originally offered the services back in 2006:
http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-hosted-communications_28.html

A standard edition of Google Apps for Your Domain is available today as a beta product without cost to domain administrators or end users. Key features include 2 gigabytes of email storage for each user, easy to use customization tools, and help for administrators via email or an online help center.
Furthermore, organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided Google continues to offer the service).

Some discussion is here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30030608

Esp here:
compsciphd 31 days ago | root | parent | next [–]

Except, they might be sued now, and it might be significantly more expensive.
They probably forgot what they wrote in their blog post
http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-launches-host…

“Furthermore, organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided
Google continues to offer the service).”***

Yes, they can claim they are no longer providing the service, but that’s difficult to argue when they are providing a functionally identical service that is just a billing change to cause a “migration”.

Now, Google is immensely wealthy, and has fine lawyers. But they don’t have all the good lawyers. I have no idea what the courts would make of this if it all went that far, but I suspect a log and intensely public legal battle, including lots of individual personal testimony and discovery, legal depositions of Google workers, Google competitors making hay, Google internal docs made public, much of it alleging that Google baited and switched innocent non-techie families, is not what the Google/Alphabet directors or investors want for the next x count of years.

Here is one of many news reports on the original surprise Google Workspace policy change announcement:
https://www.androidpolice.com/google-legacy-free-g-suite-accounts-ded/

After a few days, Google did a hint of a pullback, offering a survey on free Google Workspace use, and hinting they they would offer some sort of free migration to gmail addresses for users like me.

(No more “stupid@stupid.com” type addresses, but at least, possibly, no need to pay quite a lot of money each month, on a per-email basis, for those users with a number of personal-domain associated email addresses.)
https://www.androidpolice.com/google-surve-free-legacy-g-suite/

But, no details forthcoming.
Google says or implies that they will offer some sort of, presumably, “no-charge solution” (again, presumably, migrating all folk away from personal domain email addresses and into standard gmail accounts) before the changeover becomes final;

but that leaves everyone like me hanging, not knowing in which direction we ought to be taking action or making plans.

It’s all a big mess for many of us. Google’s “let’s now make more money” focus appears to be on the continued use of email accounts for business, and on trad business workplace services such as collaboration and office suites, all with unified domain and user account administration, and so forth.

But, it seems, a really high percentage of free G-Suite/Workspace users never much used or needed any of those services beyond email for personal use, and many or most of us would have just gone with free gmail or other free email accounts in the first place, had we known that we would eventually be facing a personally unjustifiable monthly expense.

[Another issue for many free legacy G-Suite/Workspace users:
lot of people not only set up domains for their family use, but also these people and their family bought apps and media such as books, movies, and games, etc, on those domain email accounts.

Google says they will either offer a way to migrate these purchases, or that these purchases will still be available at no monthly charge.
The second option is not very satisfactory: If a user moves to a gmail account and can’t migrate their play store purchases to that account, then the user has to stay logged in to their email on one address, and to their purchases using another address. Rather cumbersome, esp for non-techies.]

My own issue is the email issue. I have just a few docs hanging around that could easily be exported and pulled into a personal email address.
(It was always annoying to try to share a simple spreadsheet tied to a Google G-Suite account out to anyone outside the domain, anyway.)
(I don’t [I think] have Play Store purchases to worry about, and I don’t use domain collaboration features, since I am far to clueless to be capable of collaborating with self, let alone anyone else.)

Fortunately, and luckily, I made my Google Play purchases on a trad gmail account. And I use another trad gmail account for last-chance account recovery.
And my address book is almost all on gmail account (Aside from a bunch of corp email addresses. That’s less a prob for me than it would be for some.

But this whole biz is a nightmare. Esp with such a short time-lead, and Google not having yet offered specifics on any solution for people who will need to close out most or all of their G-Suite email addresses.

So that leaves my 20 or so G-Suite/Workspace email addresses.

Of these, at least 10 or more are instantly disposable. Just email list reception, or created on a whim and never used, and the like. I could kill them off, or use them for practice migration to see if it works.

And that leaves my bigger current problem:

what to do with the domain email addresses I do currently use?
I’m willing to cut it down to one or two “@stupid.com” type addresses, and pay google monthly for those. I intend to keep the domain, parked somewhere or other.

The other domain emails: I don’t ultimately care if they use my domain addressing or not, so long as they are no trouble, and they work properly. Fun while it lasted and all, but the “@stupid.com” aspect doesn’t matter at all to those

What does matter is what to do now:

Do I wait, guessing that Google will come up with some means of making a migration to a freebie gmail easy as pie? And how likely is Google to do that?

Or do I create various freebie gmail or other freebie emails and start migrating now, not wanting to wait for Google to come up with something that might or might not be satisfactory?

Or do I go ahead and create various freebie gmail or other freebie email accounts now, as placeholders for the final outcome, and then sit on them and wait to see what google eventually offers to saps like me?

And what to do about the fact that portions of my online presence, mostly directed at corps and institutions, needs to be moved? Ugh.

If I go ahead and migrate to gmail on a few test domain email addresses, any suggestions on method or software utilities? I’m willing to pay a small/moderate sum to a reputable company for their utilities, to make things easier on self.

If I go ahead with test migrations, do the imported emails show up as re-directs or as forwards? (I’m assuming an export/import method here, but I’ve never actually attempted this and don’t know how it works out in practice.)

If I do a test migration, what to do with any later emails that come winging into the old domain-email account I migrated from before it’s shut down for good? Or is it best to delete the thing and let the emails bounce?

Re the domain email accounts in active use that I don’t want to pay Google to continue using, and therefore must do something about: how the hell do I notify everyone/everycorp (or remember who to notify, for very active accounts)?

Once a test migration is done, is there some kind of auto-notification thing that can be set up to go out to senders?
And, if so, is it worth setting that up [or is doing that just an invite to spammers]?

Is there some kind of auto-re-direct utility available for G-Suite email addresses, for a time, while I try to do cleanup? And, if so, is it a good idea to use such?

What other problems with all this will have me wanting to jump off a cliff, only I haven’t thought of those probs yet?

Any and all wisdom, deep knowledge or experience, thoughts, insults, and recriminations are most welcome.

Have any of you already taken this on, for yourselves, or for family/friends/coworkers/etc?
Are any of you intending to take this on? If so, do you have a plan and methodology mapped out yet?

Much thx.