HN Explorer

Google deleted a number of free Google Apps email accounts last month or so

23 points by jasonbarone ↗ HN
I realize this may come off as complaining, but I thought it was worth mentioning as it's been yet another incredibly frustrating thing from Google.

Google Apps used to be free(freemium), for those that can't remember.

Because it was free, for years I setup numerous clients' domain emails on Google Apps for all the reasons we all like Google Apps (spam filtering, groups, storage, forwarding, etc). Many of them were setup to forward a copy of emails into those clients' alternative/personal email addresses.

Since many of these users NEVER logged into Google Apps, Google called these accounts "inactive" and about month ago deleted every single one of them.

I understand Google no longer offers free accounts, but some of these clients had no idea their accounts was being shut down and obviously just paid no attention (or missed) the emails Google sent out.

Ugh, frustrating to say the least. I take blame though. I even missed Google's warning messages on my own accounts and one of my Google accounts was wiped too...

20 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 50.2 ms ] thread
jessaustin
Presumably this comes too late to warn anyone who would have been inconvenienced? Or are we supposed to worry that active free accounts are next?
scintill76
Personally, I'm a bit paranoid/cynical: I would be expecting them to find any reason to drop free accounts even if active. I can't really blame them, either.
jasonbarone
Yea, I just found out over the past 2 weeks or so. Apparently the warnings started coming through about 2 months ago or so, and they were shut down about 2 weeks ago. I've gotten a few emails from these clients over that time.
ryanmcdonough
No I don't think we can worry about that. The warning that the accounts would be deleted were repeated and well in advance.
jnardiello
I've got several accounts deleted as well. Let me say that they warned that those accounts were going to be closed with several emails, all sent with weeks of advance. I realize that your customers may have simply ignored all the communications, but in this particular case, Google just did a fair and comprehensible move (at least, makes sense to me). On the other side, Google accounts that were actually actively used, are still there.
drz
This is standard practice with free accounts all across the industry. Inactive free accounts are regularly pruned. As long as the provider has stated their policy explicitly, they are entirely in the clear. They wouldn't even have to send you reminders, that's just courtesy. You have nobody to blame but yourself.
scintill76
FWIW, I got fair warning about this mailed to the admin address on an abandoned free Apps domain. Google is still being a bit abrupt, but probably sent out a warning that could have been heeded if the admin were more on top of things.
jasonbarone
Agreed, a simple login to the account would have prevented the deletion. Still wish Google didn't assume the account was not being used simply because of not logging in. Some of these accounts were receiving (and forwarding) 20, 30+ messages a day.
eli
Did the email warning of the shutdown not get forwarded as well?
jasonbarone
After digging, I found the ones that came to me but I missed mine the first time. Again, my fault though. My clients who experienced problems didn't recall seeing anything. My guess is they saw it and didn't care (like usual), or they just missed it altogether.
eli
Definitely a bummer. Tough spot for Google though: for people using the service only for email forwarding what else can they do besides send increasingly dire warning emails?
pan69
I received a number of emails regarding deactivation of certain accounts. Other accounts which are actively used didn't receive any notifications and remained as they were.

But yes, the Google Apps freemium is greatly missed. Over the years I've mounted quite a number of domains onto the free Google Apps simply to have a single email address available on the domain. In normal circumstances these accounts would receive hardly any traffic.

I'm still looking for an alternative email service where I can, in a single account, mount a large amount of domains for the single reason to have any number of email inboxes available for that domain. To be more precise, I'm looking for a service that allows me to mount an unlimited number of domains and charge me for traffic and storage rather per domain and/or inbox. Maybe this includes a reasonable annual flat fee as well (say $50 USD or something).

Any suggestions welcome..

j_s
"How to get free single-user Google Apps accounts"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4885538

http://lifehacker.com/5967336/use-google-app-engine-to-get-g...

I'm about to see if it still works, 1.5 years later.

pan69
I believe this used to work but I don't think it does anymore.
j_s
I created a new Google account @thenewdomain to login and setup, then deleted the free 30-day trial of Google Apps for Business and am left with my 1-account-only Google Apps. I will let you know if/when it gets shut down, but for now it seems to be working...
staunch
Yup. Pretty lame. How much were my inactive accounts costing them?
rahimnathwani
You used the past tense. Does that mean you let the accounts be deleted, rather than spending 30 seconds per domain to log in?
staunch
I have dozens of domains under my control. Many for friends and family. Some of them are for babies that don't check their email very much yet.

The fact is that Google gave those accounts away and then did an opt-out cancel on them. They want to push people off their free service they offered to make them pay. This is something Microsoft or Yahoo would do, sure, but not the old Google.

rahimnathwani
I'm surprised that you're using forwarding instead of giving your clients access using the gmail app and/or IMAP/SMTP. I've found this works better than forwarding, primarily because I don't then have to maintain my own reliable authenticated SMTP service.

Anyway, my personal experience was that the warning messages before deletion were over-and-above what could be deemed reasonable. They were sent to the domain administrator, and also to the email address specified when creating the account (i.e. to a different domain). The text was something like:

"We noticed that you haven’t used your Google Apps account for the domain [redacted].com in over a year. Please let us know if you’d like to keep this account."

All I had to do to keep the account was log in via the web, just once.

jasonbarone
Totally agree. I did give them full access. I guess I would say it was an alternative to doing Godaddy forwarding addresses. Since Apps was free, it made sense to just set it up through Google and give them the benefit of having a rock solid system that was doubling as cloud backup.

In the past I've had countless scenarios where clients lost their entire computer, or mobile, and they didn't have any backup. The first thing they want to get back is their email. After digging in, they commonly had forwarders setup via their domain registrar, meaning they effectively had no backups on the server.

Apps was basically the free solution to that, with the added benefit of what you said-- having access via IMAP/SMTP.

Since most of these clients were local/small(one owner) businesses, most of them simply said "can you forward it to my personal email?"

Most of my larger small business clients accessed it like I would-- IMAP/SMTP.

My complain here is that Google wiped these accounts calling them inactive. In my opinion, inactive accounts should have been accounts with zero email activity, not zero login activity. But I guess it's too late now...