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I really hate it when companies try to sugar coat a decision that is all downside for their customers. It may be really hard to do, but Google should just come

• indiecore 14y ago
  >When I see ridiculous sugar coating it breeds distrust and disbelief - congratulations, I now believe every single future thing you say a little less, well done. And I will especially distrust any new "free" services you decide to offer.
  • aeturnum 14y ago
    It seems like the current free customers are just fine ("Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version."), so how would it cause you to distrust their offers in the future?
    • indiecore 14y ago
      because I was about to be a free user but they cut this process off between me checking it out at the end of work and me getting home. All I wanted was a custom email address but I'm not paying 50 dollars a year for something I can manage on my own and thus I'll never be exposed to whatever else was in Google Apps.
    • jeremyjh 14y ago
      What he's talking about about is not Google's new pricing/business model, or even how they treat their customers. What he is talking about is that this announcement contains several statements that are complete bullshit. But, that is pretty much required for big corporate PR people. It isn't their fault that this is how they have to express themselves: " but time has shown that in practice, the experience isn't quite right for either group."
      • indiecore 14y ago
        Also there was no pre-announcement. If there was I wouldn't have wasted any time today on it.
    • pepr 14y ago
      Well, that's for now. How is it going to be in 3 years? Is this just a grace period? Obviously it affects new signups first, they can't just cut off everybody and force to migrate to the paid version.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
• yanw 14y ago
  Judging from this and previous threads people here are either distrusting of free services or aren't willing to pay for the goods (not everyone obviously) which is quite the paradox. I'll chalk this one down to the startup nature of this community, seeing as some are probably involved with competing products or are developing some, but the matter of fact is that this announcement is perfectly reasonable: “vanilla” gmail accounts are free, Apps accounts are not. Those who already have free Apps will keep them at the same price, there doesn't seem to be any swindling involved, and look! phone support, imagine that.
  • mdasen 14y ago
    You're correct to point out that there's no swindling or bait-and-switch happening here. I get to keep my Google Apps account for free. Google did the right thing. I think what we're reacting to is that the free tier of Google Apps doesn't seem any different (from a cost perspective) from regular Gmail. They're giving me the same storage, showing me the same ads, providing the same no phone support, etc. The real difference is that I get a custom domain which doesn't cost anything to Google. $50/user/year also seems expensive if you're not going to use the value-add of the business plans (phone support, 25GB inboxes, etc). Maybe Google could have kept the old system as well (7GB storage, ads) and charged $5/user/year for the vanity domain. $50 is just a lot for what is, frankly, more vanity value add than anything else for many of us. Yes, if you want 25GB inboxes, no ads, SLAs, etc. Google Apps can provide good value add, but I don't need those things. Google is a private business. What they announced is reasonable for a private business trying to maximize profit. However, it feels less reasonable when one thinks about the cost to provide services. The free Google Apps shouldn't cost more than the free Gmail from Google's perspective. As such, I think it's human nature to say, "then why are you charging more?" "Because they can" is a perfectly reasonable answer, but it does make us think less of Google. Google is the company pushing the Nexus 4 down to $300 to try and prove that top-grade equipment can be more mass market rather than trying to maximize profit with a $500+ Nexus 4. That's the ethos and drive that we've come to love. What Google has done is perfectly reasonable and, in fact, better than most businesses would have done: most businesses wouldn't have grandfathered us in. However, it just doesn't feel like the same Google that turned so many businesses upside-down. In short, it doesn't feel like Gmail. Gmail came along with 1GB of free storage when you got ~10MB from competitors - and Google made it into a profit center pushing the bounds in a way that made them rich and improved our lives at the same time. This just feels like a regular business trying to make money - and that just doesn't feel like Google to us. Again, I'm not saying that Google doesn't make a ton of money or that they shouldn't or whatnot. I'm merely pointing out that Google's profits often come alongside something that genuinely makes our lives better. Our world is better because Android exists. Our world is better because Google entered search. Our world is better for YouTube. Even AdSense brought relevant ads that were less obtrusive. They're all wonderful for Google too, but they pushed us forward. This doesn't feel like that. This feels like an MBA sitting in a room looking at the number of free Google Apps accounts and thinking "I bet we could convert some of those free-sign-ups into paid ones if we discontinued the free product in the future". I want to emphasize that Google doesn't owe me anything, but when you see two services that cost the same to provision and one getting priced upward, it just feels icky. For anyone who might be looking for an option for the future, Zoho offers a free tier for up to 3 inboxes: https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html.
• jxi 14y ago
  I understand you're upset, but that's probably a really naive view. Maybe it seems to you that there is no DIRECT upside for you personally, but there's always an upside, just like there's always a downside for every good thing that happens. This looks to me just synonymous to killing a high maintenance, low returns project so that they can focus better on either the business version or other stuff. The "indirect" upside is you get other Google products of better quality.
  • zmmmmm 14y ago
    To be clear, I'm not so upset about them killing the free version (although I do think it's sad - all the startups I've been in got our google apps accounts before we even had a bank account - because it was free! I wonder what will happen in the future). I mainly dislike the style of communication here. It really wouldn't be so terrible for Google to say: While it was very popular we found it was quite costly and we are not able to justify offering it as a free service on an ongoing basis. Further we found that people who signed up under free accounts often had false expectations about the level of service and support we were able to give them and it contributed to a negative overall perception of the service. We apologize to those who are unable to use Google Apps in the future because of this, but we feel it is an important change to keep the service profitable and well supported into the future.
    • pfisch 14y ago
      I absolutely agree with this. If they are going to dick us over I can understand that because they were offering us something free that costs money to run, but just be straight with us. I don't think the google apps business customers are this dumb. They aren't going to trick us with this kind of obvious double talk. We are just going to think they are being deceptive and be less understanding.
      • Karunamon 14y ago
        "Dicking us over" Really? * really? * Choosing to stop offering a free service while allowing people who already have it to keep it is dicking you over?
• alanctgardner2 14y ago
  This is a pretty pessimistic view. Customers are self-interested too: they want free content and services, but they also want absolute privacy, to ad-block everything, and generally cut off any possible revenue stream. This seems like it leads to a sort of local maxima where you produce the minimum quality required to drive users, with as little cost as possible. By cutting off ad-supported free users, Google is attempting to pursue a global maxima: rather than making the best 'free-enterprise email/document sharing/whatever else it does because I only use it for email', they're now free to focus their efforts on paying customers. I suspect the one area where this will impact the most is customer service; Google is traditionally horrible because they're loathe to waste money on minimum wage call-centre employees to support loss-leader products. Now that Apps for Domains will be a first-class, revenue generating product, maybe they'll answer the damn phone.
  • indiecore 14y ago
    by cutting off free users they just opened themselves to getting undercut by a smaller company that can offer fewer, cheaper, targeted options. I just wanted an email for my domain and that's not worth 50 bucks a year. I'll just set up my own email system at this point, call it a learning experience and never be exposed to the rest of whatever was in Google Apps.
    • loceng 14y ago
      They can play the game though, too. Offer good discounts for onloading users; First year or two free, etc.. Hell, first 5 years free. What do they care if they get you used to their products, and then stay a client for 15 years after the 5 year trial?
    • alanctgardner2 14y ago
      For most people, the time and effort of setting up and maintaining an email server is probably worth more than $5 per user per month. For a company of 100 people, that's about 10 person hours every month, without considering the initial cost to buy the hardware. Not to mention the risk of something going horribly wrong and blacking out your email, unless you've co-located the mail server on enterprise grade hardware (which will eat all your savings anyways).
• capo 14y ago
  That's a bit of an overreaction. Unless I'm reading the post incorrectly there aren't any bad news in it really: existing accounts stay free, now you have two tiers, paid and free, and with the paid you get real support for the money (and custom email etc).
  • jlmendezbonini 14y ago
    You are reading it wrong. There's no longer a free Google Apps version. What they refer as free in the post is the classic Google (@gmail.com) account. EDIT: phrasing
    • capo 14y ago
      Yeah that's what I mean by the "free tier".
      • antihero 14y ago
        So if you want a Gmail address on your domain, even if you're a non-profit, I guess you have to go fuck yourself now :(. This SUCKS.
        • fixermark 14y ago
          I believe that for nonprofits, the policy at http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/nonprofit/index.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/nonprofit/index.html is still in effect.
      • indiecore 14y ago
        That's not "free" that's just gmail.
      • cynix 14y ago
        Gmail and Google Apps are completely different products. You can't say Gmail is the "free tier" of Google Apps.
      • timdev2 14y ago
• magicalist 14y ago
  > It is all about Google deciding to maximize their profits at the expense of their users. That's fine, it's what businesses (ultimately) do (even the ones that pretend they put their users first). Somewhat offtopic, but I always find statements like this rather silly on HN, a site ostensibly focused on and for the startup community. You mention in a comment below that you've worked for several startups. While there, did you only make decisions at the expense of your users to maximize profits? If not, that's enough evidence to prove your statement wrong. Most decisions like this are more complicated. While it does make the "I just reserved a domain name and want a google-hosted webmail client for it as soon as possible" case more complicated in the future (and I have one too), in most HN threads on google's poor customer service someone will inevitably bring up the fact that they'd be willing to pay money to get phone support for their Google Apps accounts, even though you've been able to do that for quite some time now. In fact, the whole second paragraph in the article seems to be about businesses that sign up for free, and don't actually understand the limits they accepted in turn. Eliminating a product for new customers actually can be a net positive in terms of good will of your customers, even if they have to pay more. The post is a little overly cheerful, like they just came up with this brilliant new idea, but your reaction is one better saved for things like finding out a device you own has DRM you didn't know about it, or a company removing something you've paid for with a remote kill switch.
  • joonix 14y ago
    It's really see to the "profit is evil" mentality flow from places like reddit into HN, a site that's supposed to be about building companies to make profits.
    • zmmmmm 14y ago
      Just to be clear, I don't have that mentality at all, see my reply to the GP.
  • zmmmmm 14y ago
    > While there, did you only make decisions at the expense of your users to maximize profits? I think you read a little more pejorative into that sentence than I intended (I understand why, it's a common phrasing in that sense). I mean it quite literally: they maximize profits by charging their users money (at their user's "expense") - not "for the overall detriment of their users" as you might (quite reasonably) interpret it. But in this literal sense, yes, in every startup I've been involved in, we made decisions to make money and we planned for our users to pay that money. I'm not blaming Google for this - it's what businesses do (almost by definition!).
• philip1209 14y ago
  Attempting to "optimize profits" in this manner annoys me mainly because advertising makes up 96% of Google's revenue. 4% accounts for every other source of income they have. If advertising is their strength, decreasing access to business users for advertising in the name of revenue from such a basic service seems like a bad decision. That being said, if this is this is a precursor to responding to complaints about access to Google customer service by giving all Google Apps business customers access to better support, it may make some sense.
  • tytso 14y ago
    I believe the paid business version of Google Apps has always had the option (by the domain administrator) to turn off advertising for Gmail on a site-wide basis.
• notatoad 14y ago
  Sure there's an upside. There's no upside if you want google apps for free, but legions of free users make products harder to develop. It's likely that paying customers will be seeing faster development and better service.
• znowi 14y ago
  Reality check :) Google isn't a small, open startup anymore. There are layers of corporate bureaucracy that distance public from the company. You happen to deal less with people and more with the system. The focus has long shifted away from users. As a result, we see new features, offerings, and policies gently forced upon for our own good and a better experience.
• spqr 14y ago
  Google is now more expensive than Exchange Online which is superior in almost every way.
• IceyEC 14y ago
  Google isn't discontinuing its free service to existing users, they're just no longer offering a free level for new sign ups.
• BryanB55 14y ago
  Sometimes when reading articles from HN I'll try to guess if the comments will be positive or negative. I guessed that these would be positive. I seem to of been wrong though... It seems like every other day there is an article on HN talking about "google down. no support!" and everyone is always saying the problem with Google products is that if something goes wrong you can't get help. I don't know if they offered 24/7 phone support before but to me, it sounded like this was new and they are focusing on offering a service with support and making sure it stays up and reliable for more serious businesses.
  • miker64 14y ago
    We have a paid for google apps for business account. Every time I've called for support (email from a particular domain never getting to us, emails to a particular domain never getting to them, queries about outages) I've gotten a very pleasant voice who tells me in no uncertain terms that nothing is wrong, everything is okay, and could I please just f*ck on off and be a happy cog now. So, the service is weak to nonexistent, but at least the people on the phone are apologetic and nice.
• laureny 14y ago
  > When I see ridiculous sugar coating What are you talking about? There is no sugar coating in this announcement, they just explain loud and clear what they are doing: > With this in mind, we’ve decided to make things very straightforward. Starting today for all new customers: Doesn't get more sugar free than this. Maybe you were referring to Apple a few months ago when they announced their new maps?
• davidandgoliath 14y ago
  Referring to unpaying users as customers is hilarious. Users are not google's customers, they're google's product.