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Ask HN: How long until Google charges for private Gmail accounts?

176 points by jusonchan81 5y ago

Given the recent changes to workspace, it seems inevitable that someone at Google start to think this might be a huge revenue generator

monkin 5y ago
For anyone seeking a nice alternative to gmail and not so pricey I recommend Migadu: https://migadu.com https://migadu.com. I used them til this month as I moved to iCloud+ Mail with custom domains for convenience. Yet I really recommend Migadu to everyone! :)
theandrewbailey 5y ago
I'm more concerned that GMail will be shut down, just like most other useful Google products and services. They'll tell everyone to go use this messaging app they released last month.
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  I feel very confident that search and email are the last two services they’ll shut down.
  - wrboyce 5y ago
    I agree with your point, but I think ads would be in that list!
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    I could see YouTube outliving gmail.
skywal_l 5y ago
They probably already generates a lot of revenue from scanning user's emails. If they were to make Gmail a paid service, they would probably lose a lot of people. Moreover, they are not necessarily competitive against other established paid email services.
- radicaldreamer 5y ago
  They don't do that anymore (for advertising purposes anyway) and a lot of companies have stopped sending purchase details in emails anyway (like Amazon) to prevent Google from building up a database of purchases.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    Gmail makes people sign in to Google, making it easy to track searches
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      100% I wish more people understood this about the value of gmail to google. People sign in because of gmail. Signed-in users enjoy much better search quality. It's a big win.
      - skinkestek 5y ago
        I get lousy quality also when I'm logged in. Even more funny I recently got asked captchas while being logged in with a paid account with a long history of human activity and no bot activity. Usually it triggers when I try to cut through the "intelligent" cr#p they serve me anytime I look for something that doesn't have many hits. (Crazy not so fun fact: even when they have a perfect match they always seems to prioritize something else that I can only relate to my query by looking through ai glasses and squinting really hard.) Try searching for something really specific, use double quotes liberally or use allintext: <search terms goes here> and see how long it goes before you trigger the captcha ;-)
  - Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
    > stopped sending purchase details in emails anyway (like Amazon) Amazon.co.uk still sends order emails with item details, prices, delievery date & delievery address.
  - ccn0p 5y ago
    any source that talks about that? gmail is a wealth of information for Google that is almost certainly monetized six ways to Sunday.
mongol 5y ago
I don't think that will happen. Possibly that they offer some paid upgrade. But I don't think they will ask everyone to pay.
- lmz 5y ago
  They already do offer paid upgrades for more space: Google One https://one.google.com/about https://one.google.com/about
josefresco 5y ago
I'm not following - what would Google be charging for? Didn't they stop scanning email for ads a few years back?
- LightG 5y ago
  Upkeep, storage, maintenance of a billion users. I wouldn't put it past them. I'm currently leaving Google (the last jigsaw piece is gmail), but would almost encourage google to charge so that people can snap out of it and find a better alternative. Any gmail alternative suggestions? (I'm fine with paying if they are a good long term bet).
  - JamesAdir 5y ago
    Can you share a bit about the alternatives you've find? especially if you've find an alternative to google photos.
    - LightG 5y ago
      You'll find better answers than I can give based on searching here and searching "Degoogle". I've just rapidly said goodbye out of frustration and am using suboptimal stuff while I work it out. Re: Google Photos, I actually would have paid Google for extra photo storage as their app is, of course, good. I would have paid out of convenience. But they started demanding I send them my passport and utility bills before I could do that. I understand they likely have their policies and reasons, but can you believe that? I have to send them my passport and data just for the honour of paying them? Straw that broke the camels back. I already have a Prime account so I just let Amazon scoop up my photos until I find a better alternative. It's actually not bad (has "group by face" and stuff, but not as clean as Google - but maybe I've not delved into it enough). To me, same big tech nonsense, but at least Amazon actually support the customer (support is good vs non-existent at Google) and they let me pay them without requiring my dental records. /end rant
      - nottorp 5y ago
        > But they started demanding I send them my passport and utility bills before I could do that. They wanted me to send them ID so they'd let me look at an "age restricted video" on youtube. Namely a compilation of every time Samuel L Jackson says "motherfucker" in his first 10 movies or so. Seriously. I'd rather rewatch pulp fiction.
ptudan 5y ago
People would move as long as there are similar quality free services. I don't think they could get away with it. Maybe they can charge for archival storage if you break a big threshold that implies you're a power user with $$.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  People would move as long as there are similar quality free services But are there? Everyone knows Gmail. Gmail is so ubiquitous that when signing up for some things online, the systems sometimes pre-fill "@gmail.com" for the user. People will leave Gmail at the same rate they leave Facebook — very slowly. And because of the same reasons. Everyone they know, all of their mailing lists, newsletters, coupons, etc... are already on Gmail. They don't want to have to track down a couple of hundred sources and tell them a new e-mail address. E-mail is very sticky. People on HN who don't work directly with the public typically don't understand that there are MILLIONS and MILLIONS of @hotmail.com, @att.net, @earthlink.net, @aol.com, @yahoo.com, and other "legacy" e-mail addresses that are very active. And before the usual HN ageism kicks in, I'm current working with a dataset that involves about 200,000 Americans in ten states between 18 and 45, and nearly 5% of them are on @aol.com.
- tester756 5y ago
  That's a lot of effort to migrate your email to something else
jvanderbot 5y ago
I already pay for google to manage a custom domain's emails at $5/email. What does "private" mean in this case? Am I missing a free tier option?
- IMSAI8080 5y ago
  They used to have a free tier. They stopped offering it about 10 years ago but existing users were grandfathered in and it continued to be free. But no more.
- dageshi 5y ago
  10+ years ago Google offered gmail with custom domains for free. When they started charging e.g. the service you're paying $5 per month for the old users remained grandfathered into that free tier. They changed that in the past few weeks, now everyone who's been getting free gmail with custom domain for 10+ years has to pay. OP is wondering if they will start to charge for user@gmail.com accounts as well.
deleted 5y ago
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xer0x 5y ago
Aren't they already? At the top of my inbox is a message informing me that I'm almost out of space. My infinitely expanding mailbox limit from Google has stopped expanding. A good things come to an end.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Gmail's free quota is more being quickly depleted when Google started counting space used by 'high quality' (limited to 2000x2000px) photos. Previously that was free, but not any longer.
- admn2 5y ago
  Would be nice if you got some premium support for buying extra storage
  - boring_twenties 5y ago
    Don't you? I seem to remember them advertising human support when they first started calling it "Google One," but I never tried it.
  - trimbo 5y ago
    You do one.google.com
- illwrks 5y ago
  What I find interesting is that I spent a good few evening clearing out the junk from my gmail account. I got it down to around 80% and within a few weeks I'm back to 95% again...
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    You need to unsubscribe from things you have no intention of ever reading and start filtering crap you don't want straight to the trash. Gmail has a pretty good interface to creating automatic filters to tag,move,or delete crap built in or if you prefer imapfilter lets you basically write a lua program to filter your email.
advisedwang 5y ago
My guess is that killing (edit: free) workspace was more about reducing maintenance and technical debt costs for users rather than raising revenue. Google is also unlikely to kill Gmail because Gmail is the incentive for users to be signed into a Google Account, which allows them to target ads to you. That's a critical anchor.
- evan_ 5y ago
  They aren't killing Workspace, they're just making users upgrade to a paid plan. It's the same product.
  - oaiey 5y ago
    Not exactly. The plans are different with different product mix. At least I remember it like that.
    - kevincox 5y ago
      They could have just removed the difference if it was costing them so much. Very few features were different from the lowest workspace plan as far as I remember.
      - WorldMaker 5y ago
        So far as I could tell the remaining "difference" was price, and they probably thought it easier to raise the price on the grandfathered accounts than lower the price of the lowest tier. (Obviously, it's never easy to raise prices.)
        kevincox 5y ago
        If the only remaining difference was price I don't think it would cost much at all to maintain. IIRC a couple of things were limited. I ran into a few. - Reduced Google Voice/Meet Calling options. - No TLS rules for mail.
alkonaut 5y ago
I’d love to pay Google if it meant I could trust they wouldn’t read/index my email and use the information in for any purpose.
- wffurr 5y ago
  Even Fastmail "reads and indexes your email" so you can search it and to train their spam filter: https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy/ https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy/
- ricktdotorg 5y ago
  > Google Workspace customers own their customer data, not Google. Customer data that Google Workspace organizations put into our systems is theirs, and we do not scan it for advertisements.[1] if you pay for Google Workspace, your email is not scanned/indexed with the intention to serve you ads based on that content. [edited for clarity] [1] https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-whitepaper/page-6.html https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-wh...
  - CryptoBanker 5y ago
    Not scanned for advertisements. There are plenty of other uses for that data
    - jackson1442 5y ago
      At its most basic interpretation, they do scan your emails for spam. That's something I'm perfectly happy letting my email provider do for me.
- kylehotchkiss 5y ago
  Google Workspace explicitly guarantees your data won't be scanned for advertising purposes. Businesses trust it with their trade secrets and internal communications so I presume Google wouldn't scan it for other reasons too. Starts at $6/user/month. https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/gws_security_whitepaper.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/gws_security_white...
AlexCoventry 5y ago
Imagine what an incredible intelligence resource gmail is. They'd be mad to charge for it.
IMSAI8080 5y ago
I would be amazed if they stopped offering regular Gmail for free because it hooks users into the Google platform and encourages them to create an account. What I can see though is they might start charging for services that currently come with Gmail e.g. you might find they start charging for Google Drive and Google Docs etc. Some manager will come along as say "Hey Microsoft charges for this stuff so why can't we?"
- jasonsync 5y ago
  Perhaps they start adding quality of life micro-transactions? Some of which provide enough value that a significant portion of the user-base ends up paying for something?
- LegitShady 5y ago
  A Gmail account and my pixel3a are my last Google products. When the pixel does I am unlikely to replace it with another, and will then start looking into just how many accounts I need to shift the backup email away from Gmail.
danpalmer 5y ago
To a first approximation there is no market for paid consumer email. Google, Microsoft, Apple, None of them offer it. They may offer expanded storage, but that's shared with other products and a different motivation. They may offer paid email as well, but that's always got a business focus, at least for SMEs. Yes, companies like Fastmail, Hey, and many small email providers will offer paid personal email accounts, but even these put an emphasis on business use, and they are many orders of magnitude smaller than the big email providers. Gmail will remain free as long as email is expected to be free by users. Gmail is the ad-supported free product, and Google Workspace is the no-advertising, business focused version that you can pay for. (Disclaimer, I'm a Googler but have no inside information on this, these are my opinions)
- dmcgowan 5y ago
  >Gmail will remain free as long as email is expected to be free by users. This was also the expectation of G suite users. Forcing non-business users onto a paid business product which didn't even exist when users signed up was not the expectation. The original question should be looked at from that perspective. How long until Google creates a business focused Gmail plan and forces any user who uses their Gmail for business onto that plan. That could be done with a simple change in terms of service as well.
  - treesknees 5y ago
    I would expect there to be more pushback and revolting if Google suddenly said you can't use the free Gmail product for business. I can't even guess the number of contractors, artists, coffee shops, Etsy stores, food trucks, etc that I've personally interacted with that are using Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL email accounts for their business.
    - dmcgowan 5y ago
      I also couldn't imagine this happening, just think it is a better way to frame to conversation and understand how G suite users are feeling right now. There is a counterpoint though based on what you said, the large number of business users also means a larger business opportunity for them. The G suite to workspace transition has been 10 years in the making, you could imagine spreading the outrage over a longer period of time and many users not even noticing it is happening.
otikik 5y ago
It already charges, just not with money.
disillusioned 5y ago
Never, aside from the existing space limits. That's like asking how long until Google charges per search. They monetize it effectively and efficiently already and losing those users would devastate that, along with the stickiness of account management/SSO.
- timdellinger 5y ago
  Agreed! You as a user are the product, you are not the customer. Google is a marketing company. Charge money, and their supply of product drops like a rock.
paxys 5y ago
If you mean charge for Gmail in general then that's never going to happen. There's too much money in mining email content/advertising.
newfonewhodis 5y ago
I'd argue that Workspace accounts (that start at $6/mo) are already private(ish?) paid Gmail accounts.
robofanatic 5y ago
It kinda already does because Gmail shares the storage space with all other Google services. I found that recently when I started getting message like please buy more storage or else you will not be able to receive emails. I got around that by deleting some old junk on my google drive but I wonder how long I would be able to do that in future.
newscracker 5y ago
This won't happen. A Gmail account is the gateway for Android (most people using or getting started with Android would assume that a Gmail account is necessary to set it up). As long as Google doesn't give up on Android, YouTube and Maps, the free Gmail accounts aren't going anywhere. There's no point letting some other provider capture usage or other information (through email notifications) from these platforms. What could happen is that the space for each mailbox may be restricted, and linked accounts may be considered for the total space used by a person. Unused accounts may also be pruned quicker with hardly any notice.
- jldugger 5y ago
  > A Gmail account is the gateway for Android It's also an "in" on iOS, alongside Maps.
db65edfc7996 5y ago
I would gladly pay if I knew I was going to get committed service. I live in fear that someday the Algorithm will decide I am naughty and lock me out of my digital life. I have considered enrolling in a Workspace plan, but I hear any number of gotchas because it is not the happy path, and X workflow is not supported for paid plans. That is, a worse product, even if you pay.
- Hard_Space 5y ago
  > I live in fear that someday the Algorithm will decide I am naughty and lock me out of my digital life. That fear became too much for me after getting locked out twice of my main Gmail account (which has been my 'life' for 15 years) last November. I was able to recover it, but some have not been able to. Now I use Fastmail, and am migrating all Google, Amazon, SaaS etc. service I can to self-hosting. The transition is taking months in my spare time, and there's some expense, but I feel the 'free' party is truly over now.
ravenstine 5y ago
I wouldn't put it past them, but Gmail is quite the loss leader for Google. And unlike other loss leaders like YouTube (let's face it, ads and $9.99 rentals aren't gonna compensate for the countless live streams eating bandwidth), I bet it's relatively cheap for them to run. Once you have Gmail, email still being a personal necessity, then you've got an account for all of Google's services. However, they've got people trapped. If they began charging, I think the vast majority of people would roll over and pay.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  If 2/3 of users stayed and paid $3 a month Google profits would grow 50% next year.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  > And unlike other loss leaders like YouTube (let's face it, ads and $9.99 rentals aren't gonna compensate for the countless live streams eating bandwidth) Do you have a source for this? My understanding is that YouTube is now a big revenue stream for Google and probably started breaking even years ago.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Ask HN: How long until Google charges for private Gmail accounts? They...already do. It's called Google One, further being pushed by the progressive narrowing of what doesn't count against the 15GB free storage limits.
- g_p 5y ago
  I do wonder when people will cease to be willing to pay the "tax" on storage upgrades when it comes to "first party" cloud. With the general push (at least in Europe) among regulators to decouple (see investigations around app stores, bundled default apps, payment services on stores), I wonder if this model will fall apart some day. The "free" iCloud and Google storage tiers seem to have stagnated, whereas the cost of storage falls. While you can't do everything supported by first-party iCloud storage (specifically iCloud backups for one example), the files app and support for storage by API ought to provide some competition for these overpriced first party storage options. If regulators force unbundling, we could see a separate ecosystem of storage from apps/services. Maybe this would help drive more transparency of the true costs of the products and services in question, by decoupling them from "pay us 20x market rate for more storage, since you can't use any other storage with our app".
  - evercast 5y ago
    iCloud and Google storage plans are overpriced? I have always thought they are cheap storage plans. 50GB of iCloud costs $0.99 per month. 2TB costs $10 which is similar to other solutions such as Dropbox or OneDrive.
    - shaky-carrousel 5y ago
      That's $5 per TB. In Hetzner I can rent a 5TB storage box for $11.32, that's $2.27 per TB.
      - sofixa 5y ago
        But that Hetzner storage box isn't redundant, doesn't do revisions, automatic sync and backups, etc. without some time spent on it.
giantg2 5y ago
Eh, I think they probably don't want to drive anyone off the platform so they can still gather user info/preferences for their ad system.
geoffmunn 5y ago
I've always assumed that Gmail gave Google the opportunity to see how people actually type (use words), so they can link topics together and improve their search capabilities. The value of this would exceed the cost of email I would imagine. Also, if you use iCloud+, then you can attach a domain to your account and use iCloud email. Obviously only good for individual usage, but it's been extremely reliable for me.
- sixothree 5y ago
  I think this is correct. Google products only exist if they can provide personal user data in a way that other products do not.
sys_64738 5y ago
Free services which require login all easy tracking and spying. If folk paid for it then they'd not want to be spied on. We're the product because it's free.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  We would be product even if it were not free.
deleted 5y ago
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bkovacev 5y ago
Never since that’ll mean they’ll have to support the users in some way.
dheera 5y ago
They already do, if you want more than 15GB of storage space. They make it stupid hard to delete big e-mails quickly, and the interface is super super slow so that you just go "fuck it" and pay the $2/month
georgiecasey 5y ago
I always wonder why Google don't start charging for Gmail accounts for non-OECD countries or other countries where the ad rate means they make a loss.
- aeonflux 5y ago
  Because everyone there will move to first available free email alternative. Everyone else can easily pursue the same business model. Instead of gathering data for other services, other providers will build profiles and just target the users with paid email campaigns.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Lower ad price area means almost same as lower income, so they can't charge.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
Google have lots of little, ill-fitting appendages attached to the mothership. Just like Apple have their App Store (a cash cow) and MS have Edge and a variety of awkward apps bogging Windows down. They don't fit in well with the overall image and vision of those companies and are not really sustainable long term. I think gmail is liable to get axed one day when google gets tired of it. I think that day is still a long way away. But like all of the above, i wonder if google takes (free) gmail seriously.
sam0x17 5y ago
In reality they already do via the max storage that comes with a free account, and this has fallen over the years I believe. Conceivably, they could lower this to the point where anyone who has had an account for more than 5 years will likely run out of room, which could be a big windfall revenue wise but will piss off users.
niftylettuce 5y ago
Here's an OSS privacy-focused alternative for anyone needing to switch: https://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net
jrm4 5y ago
I hope soon; the value in private account things such as this is "a human on the other end to beg, plead, or yell at when things go wrong." I've done this for nearly 2 decades and it has saved my bacon more than a few times. I think I know what I'm doing with running my own site and services, except when I really really don't. My go to example is; "My Dad literally deleted all of his email and, to this day I have no clue how it happened." By working with a midranger (Hostdime) who knew what they were doing, I got on chat, and they were like, yup, it's gone. But what we can do is roll your entire deal back a day. Now, I do IT and am familiar with things -- but I had no clue they had this capability. Yes, it cost me extra, a whopping $15, but so worth it.
p0d 5y ago
10-12 years I imagine. Now the current generation has been hooked future generations will pay. "There's gold in them thar hills".
butz 5y ago
I would gladly pay for Gmail if it guaranteed that my Google account won't be disabled when some "AI" script considers it suspicious and if Google finally fixes issues with spam coming right from their @gmail.com addresses.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Would you trust a guarantee from Google?
- LegitShady 5y ago
  It's guaranteed but if it happens you can't reach anyone and there are no liabilities on Google's part. Guaranteed!
nathias 5y ago
we're already paying for it, just not with money
notatoad 5y ago
google deprecated the free "google apps for your domain" plan nearly a decade ago, so you probably don't have anything to worry about for a little while on personal gmail.
sylware 5y ago
No pb, gogol blocked my software (aka noscript/basic (x)html web browsers) a few years ago (for authentication, account creation, etc), then I now have my own smtp server (a raspberry pi with a 32GB usb key sitting next to my IAP modem, and hopefully, soon a RISC-V mini-computer, to help free the world from ARM toxic PI). I did even write the smtp software myself in lean C89 with benign bits of c99/c11. Now, they put in the "spam" folder all the emails I send to ppl using their servers... even though many of those ppl removed my emails from the "spam" folder.
- urbandw311er 5y ago
  Actually this kind of thing, whether intentional or not on Google’s part, does grate on me a little. Assuming you’ve correctly configured your domain’s SPF, DKIM, etc, then failing to deliver your emails properly could potentially be viewed as an abuse of a monopoly. In other words, their actions unfairly punish independent self-hosted SMTP users and thus make it more likely that the market will favour a larger provider, including of course… Gmail.
  - sylware 5y ago
    Indeed I do pay a DNS tax, and I did setup a proper SPF record (not DKIM since it is overkill/unreasonable: if your smtp server is pown, DKIM does not bring anything more than SPF as far as I can recall except complex kludge). That said, SMTP was designed with the possibility to avoid the DNS tax: instead of a domain use [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] for an ipv4 or [IPv6:...] for an ipv6. Where something seems really wrong: ppl removing my emails from their spam folder does not seem to have any impact.
partiallypro 5y ago
I don't think it will ever happen. That being said, I have been wanting to move to Outlook.com, but I have a custom domain email. Currently it's allowed in Gmail because it's using an external smtp server from Mailgun. But in order to add/accept a custom domain in Outlook you have to have your domain with GoDaddy (if you aren't O365) which I simply refuse to do.
imwillofficial 5y ago
Free was always a scam.
qwertox 5y ago
Google would only do that if Microsoft and maybe some other big free email providers would do it as well. It would not be for monetization, but to start to tie addresses to well known identities. A coordinated action from the biggest providers. Addresses like htfan199100@gmail.com (the Managing Director and Head of Investment Banking of the Emirates Investment Bank in Dubai who sent me an email with my public IP as the email subject) would disappear, since paying 20€/year for such a purpose would likely not be lucrative anymore. They'd move to some other shady domains which could easily be blacklisted.
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
You need a GMail account to use an Android phone, so I'd say the chances of that happening are pretty slim. There are a sizable margin of Android devices that exist for the purpose of being cheap gateways into other paid services. If, overnight, you suddenly needed a subscription service just to use the phone, I'm willing to bet a substantial number of them would immediately go into the trash.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  You need a Google account to use most Android phones. You can have a Google account without a Gmail account.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    I agree but for lots of people who get an android phone it's not an obvious difference.
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x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
Out of all the public email providers out there, how many of them charge?
vondur 5y ago
I doubt they’d ever charge for email. It’s one big source of data to feed to the mothership.
wing-_-nuts 5y ago
Google won't charge for gmail because it's a treasure trove of our most intimate secrets that are used as grist for it's advertising mill. Besides, the millisecond they do so I'm switching to someone like protonmail. The only reason I still use gmail today is that it's free and the inertia to move is huge. Google charging for gmail would be like meta charging for facebook. Our data is worth so much more to them than a few bucks a month in a service charge.
runjake 5y ago
We "pay" for it now with ads and surveillance. Would I welcome a pay tier where I'm still surveilled? No. Would I welcome a pay tier without surveillance? Sign me up now.
staticassertion 5y ago
There are no successful competitors in the space that charge money. Who would be stupid enough to take a dominant market position that purely benefits them and attempt to monetize it? Email is a commodity market and it hasn't been shown that anyone is willing to pay for a premium en-masse. I see no risk here.
karteum 5y ago
I don't think they will, it would be suicide (their business model relies on the fact that they can collect data from you. It's free because you are the product !). Yet, it's still useful to keep in mind that they can disable your account at any time (with _all_ associated services i.e. your email, contact list, youtube history, Drive documents, etc) without any appeal (e.g. because AI would have triggered supposed misconduct from you or because AI may think you are not the genuine account owner !). Because of that, it's always good practice to periodically backup your data (e.g. using takeout.google.com, noting that the export from GMail is half-broken with non-unicode characters - which is why I backup it with IMAP...).
- dicknuckle 5y ago
  This is better for Gmail backups. https://github.com/GAM-team/got-your-back https://github.com/GAM-team/got-your-back
geocrasher 5y ago
They're already monetizing it by 1) charging for more storage 2) making it extremely easy and painless to upgrade to Google Workspace. Zero training needed.
kazinator 5y ago
Google already charges for continued use of private Google accounts that have exceeded their storage limit. Users can create another account to keep receiving mail, but you can't even configure the overflown old one to forward to the new one. A strategy for using Gmail is to create a main account which you keep below the storage limit, always. Set up that main facade account to forward e-mail to some other Gmail account, and delete it.
asiachick 5y ago
I'm confused. AFAIK you can use google docs for free. What you can't do for free is register your own domain and then register that with Google Workspace. Am I wrong? The first, using docs, is you as an individual user and is still free AFAIK. The 2nd, is you having an organization with multiple users and admin accounts that can control what those user can do with docs and other google services, (like can't share outside the org, can transfer docs between accounts like when someone leaves, etc....). This is the one that has not been free for a while and that Google recently tried to push a few legacy free users to be paid. Personally I switched to paid from free long ago. As an individual user it's still worth it to me to pay Google a measly $6 a month to run my email for my domain. It's still my domain and I can switch if I need to. I back up my docs as well just in case. Further, their support as a paid user has been great so far. Every time I've contacted them they've gotten back to me quickly and been very helpful.
awinter-py 5y ago
larger question of what is the future of email, is there a major useful replacement coming, will privacy concerns in the provider or protocol force an update (a new snowden-type event), and why has their webmail interface gotten so clunky and bad
comonoid 5y ago
Yandex Mail has subscription plan for ad-free web interface. Incidentally, it is separate from Yandex Plus subscription (something like Amazon Prime for Yandex services).
rodolphoarruda 5y ago
In some way, Google is already charging for personal accounts via storage for Photos. I's risk to say it is the most relevant G service for a person/family these days. Far more relevant than email, which is becoming more and more irrelevant next to IMs and push notifications.
wolpoli 5y ago
We'll see the storage space for Google Drive being cut down drastically or features held back, long before they'll start thinking of charging for Gmail. The reason is that Gmail is part of their advertising platform. For Gmail, I expect that they'll add more ads instead to make more money. Perhaps they'll try to squeeze more money out of companies that depend on email marketing.
hammyhavoc 5y ago
Free services will continue for as long as surveillance capitalism is legal, and advertising is profitable. The majority of their revenue comes from ads, i.e. YouTube, and ads in Gmail and on Google's SERP.
endofreach 5y ago
They already do, just in another currency. Can we please finally stop pretending these products are „free“? I mean, at least in a community such as HN.
sershe 5y ago
I would gladly pay for GMail as long as it includes an actual contract, where I would know my paid-for service is not going to be arbitrarily terminated for a random AI reason (or any reason, short of a legal requirement).
valdask 5y ago
Having ability to read your emails and profile by that seems to be more profitable right now; when that changes it will become paid or discontinued.

176 points by jusonchan81 5y ago

Given the recent changes to workspace, it seems inevitable that someone at Google start to think this might be a huge revenue generator

monkin 5y ago

For anyone seeking a nice alternative to gmail and not so pricey I recommend Migadu: https://migadu.com https://migadu.com. I used them til this month as I moved to iCloud+ Mail with custom domains for convenience. Yet I really recommend Migadu to everyone! :)

theandrewbailey 5y ago

I'm more concerned that GMail will be shut down, just like most other useful Google products and services. They'll tell everyone to go use this messaging app they released last month.

wodenokoto 5y ago
I feel very confident that search and email are the last two services they’ll shut down.
- wrboyce 5y ago
  I agree with your point, but I think ads would be in that list!
- charcircuit 5y ago
  I could see YouTube outliving gmail.

skywal_l 5y ago

They probably already generates a lot of revenue from scanning user's emails. If they were to make Gmail a paid service, they would probably lose a lot of people. Moreover, they are not necessarily competitive against other established paid email services.

radicaldreamer 5y ago
They don't do that anymore (for advertising purposes anyway) and a lot of companies have stopped sending purchase details in emails anyway (like Amazon) to prevent Google from building up a database of purchases.
- belltaco 5y ago
  Gmail makes people sign in to Google, making it easy to track searches
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    100% I wish more people understood this about the value of gmail to google. People sign in because of gmail. Signed-in users enjoy much better search quality. It's a big win.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      I get lousy quality also when I'm logged in. Even more funny I recently got asked captchas while being logged in with a paid account with a long history of human activity and no bot activity. Usually it triggers when I try to cut through the "intelligent" cr#p they serve me anytime I look for something that doesn't have many hits. (Crazy not so fun fact: even when they have a perfect match they always seems to prioritize something else that I can only relate to my query by looking through ai glasses and squinting really hard.) Try searching for something really specific, use double quotes liberally or use allintext: <search terms goes here> and see how long it goes before you trigger the captcha ;-)
- Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
  > stopped sending purchase details in emails anyway (like Amazon) Amazon.co.uk still sends order emails with item details, prices, delievery date & delievery address.
- ccn0p 5y ago
  any source that talks about that? gmail is a wealth of information for Google that is almost certainly monetized six ways to Sunday.

mongol 5y ago

I don't think that will happen. Possibly that they offer some paid upgrade. But I don't think they will ask everyone to pay.

lmz 5y ago
They already do offer paid upgrades for more space: Google One https://one.google.com/about https://one.google.com/about

josefresco 5y ago

I'm not following - what would Google be charging for? Didn't they stop scanning email for ads a few years back?

LightG 5y ago
Upkeep, storage, maintenance of a billion users. I wouldn't put it past them. I'm currently leaving Google (the last jigsaw piece is gmail), but would almost encourage google to charge so that people can snap out of it and find a better alternative. Any gmail alternative suggestions? (I'm fine with paying if they are a good long term bet).
- JamesAdir 5y ago
  Can you share a bit about the alternatives you've find? especially if you've find an alternative to google photos.
  - LightG 5y ago
    You'll find better answers than I can give based on searching here and searching "Degoogle". I've just rapidly said goodbye out of frustration and am using suboptimal stuff while I work it out. Re: Google Photos, I actually would have paid Google for extra photo storage as their app is, of course, good. I would have paid out of convenience. But they started demanding I send them my passport and utility bills before I could do that. I understand they likely have their policies and reasons, but can you believe that? I have to send them my passport and data just for the honour of paying them? Straw that broke the camels back. I already have a Prime account so I just let Amazon scoop up my photos until I find a better alternative. It's actually not bad (has "group by face" and stuff, but not as clean as Google - but maybe I've not delved into it enough). To me, same big tech nonsense, but at least Amazon actually support the customer (support is good vs non-existent at Google) and they let me pay them without requiring my dental records. /end rant
    - nottorp 5y ago
      > But they started demanding I send them my passport and utility bills before I could do that. They wanted me to send them ID so they'd let me look at an "age restricted video" on youtube. Namely a compilation of every time Samuel L Jackson says "motherfucker" in his first 10 movies or so. Seriously. I'd rather rewatch pulp fiction.

ptudan 5y ago

People would move as long as there are similar quality free services. I don't think they could get away with it. Maybe they can charge for archival storage if you break a big threshold that implies you're a power user with $$.

reaperducer 5y ago
People would move as long as there are similar quality free services But are there? Everyone knows Gmail. Gmail is so ubiquitous that when signing up for some things online, the systems sometimes pre-fill "@gmail.com" for the user. People will leave Gmail at the same rate they leave Facebook — very slowly. And because of the same reasons. Everyone they know, all of their mailing lists, newsletters, coupons, etc... are already on Gmail. They don't want to have to track down a couple of hundred sources and tell them a new e-mail address. E-mail is very sticky. People on HN who don't work directly with the public typically don't understand that there are MILLIONS and MILLIONS of @hotmail.com, @att.net, @earthlink.net, @aol.com, @yahoo.com, and other "legacy" e-mail addresses that are very active. And before the usual HN ageism kicks in, I'm current working with a dataset that involves about 200,000 Americans in ten states between 18 and 45, and nearly 5% of them are on @aol.com.
tester756 5y ago
That's a lot of effort to migrate your email to something else

jvanderbot 5y ago

I already pay for google to manage a custom domain's emails at $5/email. What does "private" mean in this case? Am I missing a free tier option?

IMSAI8080 5y ago
They used to have a free tier. They stopped offering it about 10 years ago but existing users were grandfathered in and it continued to be free. But no more.
dageshi 5y ago
10+ years ago Google offered gmail with custom domains for free. When they started charging e.g. the service you're paying $5 per month for the old users remained grandfathered into that free tier. They changed that in the past few weeks, now everyone who's been getting free gmail with custom domain for 10+ years has to pay. OP is wondering if they will start to charge for user@gmail.com accounts as well.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

xer0x 5y ago

Aren't they already? At the top of my inbox is a message informing me that I'm almost out of space. My infinitely expanding mailbox limit from Google has stopped expanding. A good things come to an end.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Gmail's free quota is more being quickly depleted when Google started counting space used by 'high quality' (limited to 2000x2000px) photos. Previously that was free, but not any longer.
admn2 5y ago
Would be nice if you got some premium support for buying extra storage
- boring_twenties 5y ago
  Don't you? I seem to remember them advertising human support when they first started calling it "Google One," but I never tried it.
- trimbo 5y ago
  You do one.google.com
illwrks 5y ago
What I find interesting is that I spent a good few evening clearing out the junk from my gmail account. I got it down to around 80% and within a few weeks I'm back to 95% again...
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  You need to unsubscribe from things you have no intention of ever reading and start filtering crap you don't want straight to the trash. Gmail has a pretty good interface to creating automatic filters to tag,move,or delete crap built in or if you prefer imapfilter lets you basically write a lua program to filter your email.

advisedwang 5y ago

My guess is that killing (edit: free) workspace was more about reducing maintenance and technical debt costs for users rather than raising revenue. Google is also unlikely to kill Gmail because Gmail is the incentive for users to be signed into a Google Account, which allows them to target ads to you. That's a critical anchor.

evan_ 5y ago
They aren't killing Workspace, they're just making users upgrade to a paid plan. It's the same product.
- oaiey 5y ago
  Not exactly. The plans are different with different product mix. At least I remember it like that.
  - kevincox 5y ago
    They could have just removed the difference if it was costing them so much. Very few features were different from the lowest workspace plan as far as I remember.
    - WorldMaker 5y ago
      So far as I could tell the remaining "difference" was price, and they probably thought it easier to raise the price on the grandfathered accounts than lower the price of the lowest tier. (Obviously, it's never easy to raise prices.)
      - kevincox 5y ago
        If the only remaining difference was price I don't think it would cost much at all to maintain. IIRC a couple of things were limited. I ran into a few. - Reduced Google Voice/Meet Calling options. - No TLS rules for mail.

alkonaut 5y ago

I’d love to pay Google if it meant I could trust they wouldn’t read/index my email and use the information in for any purpose.

wffurr 5y ago
Even Fastmail "reads and indexes your email" so you can search it and to train their spam filter: https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy/ https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy/
ricktdotorg 5y ago
> Google Workspace customers own their customer data, not Google. Customer data that Google Workspace organizations put into our systems is theirs, and we do not scan it for advertisements.[1] if you pay for Google Workspace, your email is not scanned/indexed with the intention to serve you ads based on that content. [edited for clarity] [1] https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-whitepaper/page-6.html https://workspace.google.com/learn-more/security/security-wh...
- CryptoBanker 5y ago
  Not scanned for advertisements. There are plenty of other uses for that data
  - jackson1442 5y ago
    At its most basic interpretation, they do scan your emails for spam. That's something I'm perfectly happy letting my email provider do for me.
kylehotchkiss 5y ago
Google Workspace explicitly guarantees your data won't be scanned for advertising purposes. Businesses trust it with their trade secrets and internal communications so I presume Google wouldn't scan it for other reasons too. Starts at $6/user/month. https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/gws_security_whitepaper.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/gws_security_white...

AlexCoventry 5y ago

Imagine what an incredible intelligence resource gmail is. They'd be mad to charge for it.

IMSAI8080 5y ago

I would be amazed if they stopped offering regular Gmail for free because it hooks users into the Google platform and encourages them to create an account. What I can see though is they might start charging for services that currently come with Gmail e.g. you might find they start charging for Google Drive and Google Docs etc. Some manager will come along as say "Hey Microsoft charges for this stuff so why can't we?"

jasonsync 5y ago
Perhaps they start adding quality of life micro-transactions? Some of which provide enough value that a significant portion of the user-base ends up paying for something?
LegitShady 5y ago
A Gmail account and my pixel3a are my last Google products. When the pixel does I am unlikely to replace it with another, and will then start looking into just how many accounts I need to shift the backup email away from Gmail.

danpalmer 5y ago

To a first approximation there is no market for paid consumer email. Google, Microsoft, Apple, None of them offer it. They may offer expanded storage, but that's shared with other products and a different motivation. They may offer paid email as well, but that's always got a business focus, at least for SMEs. Yes, companies like Fastmail, Hey, and many small email providers will offer paid personal email accounts, but even these put an emphasis on business use, and they are many orders of magnitude smaller than the big email providers. Gmail will remain free as long as email is expected to be free by users. Gmail is the ad-supported free product, and Google Workspace is the no-advertising, business focused version that you can pay for. (Disclaimer, I'm a Googler but have no inside information on this, these are my opinions)

dmcgowan 5y ago
>Gmail will remain free as long as email is expected to be free by users. This was also the expectation of G suite users. Forcing non-business users onto a paid business product which didn't even exist when users signed up was not the expectation. The original question should be looked at from that perspective. How long until Google creates a business focused Gmail plan and forces any user who uses their Gmail for business onto that plan. That could be done with a simple change in terms of service as well.
- treesknees 5y ago
  I would expect there to be more pushback and revolting if Google suddenly said you can't use the free Gmail product for business. I can't even guess the number of contractors, artists, coffee shops, Etsy stores, food trucks, etc that I've personally interacted with that are using Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL email accounts for their business.
  - dmcgowan 5y ago
    I also couldn't imagine this happening, just think it is a better way to frame to conversation and understand how G suite users are feeling right now. There is a counterpoint though based on what you said, the large number of business users also means a larger business opportunity for them. The G suite to workspace transition has been 10 years in the making, you could imagine spreading the outrage over a longer period of time and many users not even noticing it is happening.

otikik 5y ago

It already charges, just not with money.

disillusioned 5y ago

Never, aside from the existing space limits. That's like asking how long until Google charges per search. They monetize it effectively and efficiently already and losing those users would devastate that, along with the stickiness of account management/SSO.

timdellinger 5y ago
Agreed! You as a user are the product, you are not the customer. Google is a marketing company. Charge money, and their supply of product drops like a rock.

paxys 5y ago

If you mean charge for Gmail in general then that's never going to happen. There's too much money in mining email content/advertising.

newfonewhodis 5y ago

I'd argue that Workspace accounts (that start at $6/mo) are already private(ish?) paid Gmail accounts.

robofanatic 5y ago

It kinda already does because Gmail shares the storage space with all other Google services. I found that recently when I started getting message like please buy more storage or else you will not be able to receive emails. I got around that by deleting some old junk on my google drive but I wonder how long I would be able to do that in future.

newscracker 5y ago

This won't happen. A Gmail account is the gateway for Android (most people using or getting started with Android would assume that a Gmail account is necessary to set it up). As long as Google doesn't give up on Android, YouTube and Maps, the free Gmail accounts aren't going anywhere. There's no point letting some other provider capture usage or other information (through email notifications) from these platforms. What could happen is that the space for each mailbox may be restricted, and linked accounts may be considered for the total space used by a person. Unused accounts may also be pruned quicker with hardly any notice.

jldugger 5y ago
> A Gmail account is the gateway for Android It's also an "in" on iOS, alongside Maps.

db65edfc7996 5y ago

I would gladly pay if I knew I was going to get committed service. I live in fear that someday the Algorithm will decide I am naughty and lock me out of my digital life. I have considered enrolling in a Workspace plan, but I hear any number of gotchas because it is not the happy path, and X workflow is not supported for paid plans. That is, a worse product, even if you pay.

Hard_Space 5y ago
> I live in fear that someday the Algorithm will decide I am naughty and lock me out of my digital life. That fear became too much for me after getting locked out twice of my main Gmail account (which has been my 'life' for 15 years) last November. I was able to recover it, but some have not been able to. Now I use Fastmail, and am migrating all Google, Amazon, SaaS etc. service I can to self-hosting. The transition is taking months in my spare time, and there's some expense, but I feel the 'free' party is truly over now.

ravenstine 5y ago

I wouldn't put it past them, but Gmail is quite the loss leader for Google. And unlike other loss leaders like YouTube (let's face it, ads and $9.99 rentals aren't gonna compensate for the countless live streams eating bandwidth), I bet it's relatively cheap for them to run. Once you have Gmail, email still being a personal necessity, then you've got an account for all of Google's services. However, they've got people trapped. If they began charging, I think the vast majority of people would roll over and pay.

michaelmrose 5y ago
If 2/3 of users stayed and paid $3 a month Google profits would grow 50% next year.
shkkmo 5y ago
> And unlike other loss leaders like YouTube (let's face it, ads and $9.99 rentals aren't gonna compensate for the countless live streams eating bandwidth) Do you have a source for this? My understanding is that YouTube is now a big revenue stream for Google and probably started breaking even years ago.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Ask HN: How long until Google charges for private Gmail accounts? They...already do. It's called Google One, further being pushed by the progressive narrowing of what doesn't count against the 15GB free storage limits.

g_p 5y ago
I do wonder when people will cease to be willing to pay the "tax" on storage upgrades when it comes to "first party" cloud. With the general push (at least in Europe) among regulators to decouple (see investigations around app stores, bundled default apps, payment services on stores), I wonder if this model will fall apart some day. The "free" iCloud and Google storage tiers seem to have stagnated, whereas the cost of storage falls. While you can't do everything supported by first-party iCloud storage (specifically iCloud backups for one example), the files app and support for storage by API ought to provide some competition for these overpriced first party storage options. If regulators force unbundling, we could see a separate ecosystem of storage from apps/services. Maybe this would help drive more transparency of the true costs of the products and services in question, by decoupling them from "pay us 20x market rate for more storage, since you can't use any other storage with our app".
- evercast 5y ago
  iCloud and Google storage plans are overpriced? I have always thought they are cheap storage plans. 50GB of iCloud costs $0.99 per month. 2TB costs $10 which is similar to other solutions such as Dropbox or OneDrive.
  - shaky-carrousel 5y ago
    That's $5 per TB. In Hetzner I can rent a 5TB storage box for $11.32, that's $2.27 per TB.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      But that Hetzner storage box isn't redundant, doesn't do revisions, automatic sync and backups, etc. without some time spent on it.

giantg2 5y ago

Eh, I think they probably don't want to drive anyone off the platform so they can still gather user info/preferences for their ad system.

geoffmunn 5y ago

I've always assumed that Gmail gave Google the opportunity to see how people actually type (use words), so they can link topics together and improve their search capabilities. The value of this would exceed the cost of email I would imagine. Also, if you use iCloud+, then you can attach a domain to your account and use iCloud email. Obviously only good for individual usage, but it's been extremely reliable for me.

sixothree 5y ago
I think this is correct. Google products only exist if they can provide personal user data in a way that other products do not.

sys_64738 5y ago

Free services which require login all easy tracking and spying. If folk paid for it then they'd not want to be spied on. We're the product because it's free.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago
We would be product even if it were not free.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bkovacev 5y ago

Never since that’ll mean they’ll have to support the users in some way.

dheera 5y ago

They already do, if you want more than 15GB of storage space. They make it stupid hard to delete big e-mails quickly, and the interface is super super slow so that you just go "fuck it" and pay the $2/month

georgiecasey 5y ago

I always wonder why Google don't start charging for Gmail accounts for non-OECD countries or other countries where the ad rate means they make a loss.

aeonflux 5y ago
Because everyone there will move to first available free email alternative. Everyone else can easily pursue the same business model. Instead of gathering data for other services, other providers will build profiles and just target the users with paid email campaigns.
fomine3 5y ago
Lower ad price area means almost same as lower income, so they can't charge.

FridayoLeary 5y ago

Google have lots of little, ill-fitting appendages attached to the mothership. Just like Apple have their App Store (a cash cow) and MS have Edge and a variety of awkward apps bogging Windows down. They don't fit in well with the overall image and vision of those companies and are not really sustainable long term. I think gmail is liable to get axed one day when google gets tired of it. I think that day is still a long way away. But like all of the above, i wonder if google takes (free) gmail seriously.

sam0x17 5y ago

In reality they already do via the max storage that comes with a free account, and this has fallen over the years I believe. Conceivably, they could lower this to the point where anyone who has had an account for more than 5 years will likely run out of room, which could be a big windfall revenue wise but will piss off users.

niftylettuce 5y ago

Here's an OSS privacy-focused alternative for anyone needing to switch: https://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net

jrm4 5y ago

I hope soon; the value in private account things such as this is "a human on the other end to beg, plead, or yell at when things go wrong." I've done this for nearly 2 decades and it has saved my bacon more than a few times. I think I know what I'm doing with running my own site and services, except when I really really don't. My go to example is; "My Dad literally deleted all of his email and, to this day I have no clue how it happened." By working with a midranger (Hostdime) who knew what they were doing, I got on chat, and they were like, yup, it's gone. But what we can do is roll your entire deal back a day. Now, I do IT and am familiar with things -- but I had no clue they had this capability. Yes, it cost me extra, a whopping $15, but so worth it.

p0d 5y ago

10-12 years I imagine. Now the current generation has been hooked future generations will pay. "There's gold in them thar hills".

butz 5y ago

I would gladly pay for Gmail if it guaranteed that my Google account won't be disabled when some "AI" script considers it suspicious and if Google finally fixes issues with spam coming right from their @gmail.com addresses.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
Would you trust a guarantee from Google?
LegitShady 5y ago
It's guaranteed but if it happens you can't reach anyone and there are no liabilities on Google's part. Guaranteed!

nathias 5y ago

we're already paying for it, just not with money

notatoad 5y ago

google deprecated the free "google apps for your domain" plan nearly a decade ago, so you probably don't have anything to worry about for a little while on personal gmail.

sylware 5y ago

No pb, gogol blocked my software (aka noscript/basic (x)html web browsers) a few years ago (for authentication, account creation, etc), then I now have my own smtp server (a raspberry pi with a 32GB usb key sitting next to my IAP modem, and hopefully, soon a RISC-V mini-computer, to help free the world from ARM toxic PI). I did even write the smtp software myself in lean C89 with benign bits of c99/c11. Now, they put in the "spam" folder all the emails I send to ppl using their servers... even though many of those ppl removed my emails from the "spam" folder.

urbandw311er 5y ago
Actually this kind of thing, whether intentional or not on Google’s part, does grate on me a little. Assuming you’ve correctly configured your domain’s SPF, DKIM, etc, then failing to deliver your emails properly could potentially be viewed as an abuse of a monopoly. In other words, their actions unfairly punish independent self-hosted SMTP users and thus make it more likely that the market will favour a larger provider, including of course… Gmail.
- sylware 5y ago
  Indeed I do pay a DNS tax, and I did setup a proper SPF record (not DKIM since it is overkill/unreasonable: if your smtp server is pown, DKIM does not bring anything more than SPF as far as I can recall except complex kludge). That said, SMTP was designed with the possibility to avoid the DNS tax: instead of a domain use [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] for an ipv4 or [IPv6:...] for an ipv6. Where something seems really wrong: ppl removing my emails from their spam folder does not seem to have any impact.

partiallypro 5y ago

I don't think it will ever happen. That being said, I have been wanting to move to Outlook.com, but I have a custom domain email. Currently it's allowed in Gmail because it's using an external smtp server from Mailgun. But in order to add/accept a custom domain in Outlook you have to have your domain with GoDaddy (if you aren't O365) which I simply refuse to do.

imwillofficial 5y ago

Free was always a scam.

qwertox 5y ago

Google would only do that if Microsoft and maybe some other big free email providers would do it as well. It would not be for monetization, but to start to tie addresses to well known identities. A coordinated action from the biggest providers. Addresses like htfan199100@gmail.com (the Managing Director and Head of Investment Banking of the Emirates Investment Bank in Dubai who sent me an email with my public IP as the email subject) would disappear, since paying 20€/year for such a purpose would likely not be lucrative anymore. They'd move to some other shady domains which could easily be blacklisted.

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

You need a GMail account to use an Android phone, so I'd say the chances of that happening are pretty slim. There are a sizable margin of Android devices that exist for the purpose of being cheap gateways into other paid services. If, overnight, you suddenly needed a subscription service just to use the phone, I'm willing to bet a substantial number of them would immediately go into the trash.

Denvercoder9 5y ago
You need a Google account to use most Android phones. You can have a Google account without a Gmail account.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  I agree but for lots of people who get an android phone it's not an obvious difference.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

Out of all the public email providers out there, how many of them charge?

vondur 5y ago

I doubt they’d ever charge for email. It’s one big source of data to feed to the mothership.

wing-_-nuts 5y ago

Google won't charge for gmail because it's a treasure trove of our most intimate secrets that are used as grist for it's advertising mill. Besides, the millisecond they do so I'm switching to someone like protonmail. The only reason I still use gmail today is that it's free and the inertia to move is huge. Google charging for gmail would be like meta charging for facebook. Our data is worth so much more to them than a few bucks a month in a service charge.

runjake 5y ago

We "pay" for it now with ads and surveillance. Would I welcome a pay tier where I'm still surveilled? No. Would I welcome a pay tier without surveillance? Sign me up now.

staticassertion 5y ago

There are no successful competitors in the space that charge money. Who would be stupid enough to take a dominant market position that purely benefits them and attempt to monetize it? Email is a commodity market and it hasn't been shown that anyone is willing to pay for a premium en-masse. I see no risk here.

karteum 5y ago

I don't think they will, it would be suicide (their business model relies on the fact that they can collect data from you. It's free because you are the product !). Yet, it's still useful to keep in mind that they can disable your account at any time (with _all_ associated services i.e. your email, contact list, youtube history, Drive documents, etc) without any appeal (e.g. because AI would have triggered supposed misconduct from you or because AI may think you are not the genuine account owner !). Because of that, it's always good practice to periodically backup your data (e.g. using takeout.google.com, noting that the export from GMail is half-broken with non-unicode characters - which is why I backup it with IMAP...).

dicknuckle 5y ago
This is better for Gmail backups. https://github.com/GAM-team/got-your-back https://github.com/GAM-team/got-your-back

geocrasher 5y ago

They're already monetizing it by 1) charging for more storage 2) making it extremely easy and painless to upgrade to Google Workspace. Zero training needed.

kazinator 5y ago

Google already charges for continued use of private Google accounts that have exceeded their storage limit. Users can create another account to keep receiving mail, but you can't even configure the overflown old one to forward to the new one. A strategy for using Gmail is to create a main account which you keep below the storage limit, always. Set up that main facade account to forward e-mail to some other Gmail account, and delete it.

asiachick 5y ago

I'm confused. AFAIK you can use google docs for free. What you can't do for free is register your own domain and then register that with Google Workspace. Am I wrong? The first, using docs, is you as an individual user and is still free AFAIK. The 2nd, is you having an organization with multiple users and admin accounts that can control what those user can do with docs and other google services, (like can't share outside the org, can transfer docs between accounts like when someone leaves, etc....). This is the one that has not been free for a while and that Google recently tried to push a few legacy free users to be paid. Personally I switched to paid from free long ago. As an individual user it's still worth it to me to pay Google a measly $6 a month to run my email for my domain. It's still my domain and I can switch if I need to. I back up my docs as well just in case. Further, their support as a paid user has been great so far. Every time I've contacted them they've gotten back to me quickly and been very helpful.

awinter-py 5y ago

larger question of what is the future of email, is there a major useful replacement coming, will privacy concerns in the provider or protocol force an update (a new snowden-type event), and why has their webmail interface gotten so clunky and bad

comonoid 5y ago

Yandex Mail has subscription plan for ad-free web interface. Incidentally, it is separate from Yandex Plus subscription (something like Amazon Prime for Yandex services).

rodolphoarruda 5y ago

In some way, Google is already charging for personal accounts via storage for Photos. I's risk to say it is the most relevant G service for a person/family these days. Far more relevant than email, which is becoming more and more irrelevant next to IMs and push notifications.

wolpoli 5y ago

We'll see the storage space for Google Drive being cut down drastically or features held back, long before they'll start thinking of charging for Gmail. The reason is that Gmail is part of their advertising platform. For Gmail, I expect that they'll add more ads instead to make more money. Perhaps they'll try to squeeze more money out of companies that depend on email marketing.

hammyhavoc 5y ago

Free services will continue for as long as surveillance capitalism is legal, and advertising is profitable. The majority of their revenue comes from ads, i.e. YouTube, and ads in Gmail and on Google's SERP.

endofreach 5y ago

They already do, just in another currency. Can we please finally stop pretending these products are „free“? I mean, at least in a community such as HN.

sershe 5y ago

I would gladly pay for GMail as long as it includes an actual contract, where I would know my paid-for service is not going to be arbitrarily terminated for a random AI reason (or any reason, short of a legal requirement).

valdask 5y ago

Having ability to read your emails and profile by that seems to be more profitable right now; when that changes it will become paid or discontinued.