Google hit with lawsuit for dropping free Workspace apps A putative class action lawsuit has been filed against Google in California by early adopters who are unhappy about the ads company's decision to demand fees for its Workspace productivity suite. At the $5 million suit's core is an allegation that Google promised early adopters of what would later become Google Workspace that …
"Google promised early adopters of what would later become Google Workspace that they would get to use a free version of the service for as long as the search giant offered it."
So they've decided not to offer it any more, so nothing to see here then. Seriously though stop trusting Google not to ruin their apps and not bin them when the wind direction changes, here be dragons.
"So they've decided not to offer it any more..."
From my minimal reading into this topic (very minimal admittedly), Google havent actually stopped offering the services, they've simply changed the name and pretended it's a completely new service.
"Hi I'd like to use this voucher to buy a Big Mac."
"I'm sorry Sir, but we no longer sell Big Macs."
"But what's that then?"
"That's our new Burger, the Gros Fromage. It's made of two 1.6 oz beef patties, special sauce, iceberg lettuce, American cheese, dill pickles, and minced onions, served in a three-part sesame seed bun."
"But that's exactly whats in a big Mac!"
"Yes Sir, but this is a Gros Fromage, not a Big Mac. See, it says it right there on the packaging."
I assume they meant "offer the service" as "offer the free service", which they're no longer doing. That's the kind of sneaky language places like using. I can't feel too annoyed at Google though because they gave people a free service for sixteen years; if they made it a short time before taking it away, I would also think it's a bait and switch, but I never expect free or unlimited things to stay available, and sixteen years is plenty of time for a service to last before something changes in it.
Sure, but on what basis would you sue? In almost all cases, the real terms of the offer are in a longer contract which specifies more explicitly what you'll get, so you have the ability to understand what was included and for how long before you started. The closest thing I can see is false advertising, which could sometimes work, but is prone to lots of loopholes because advertising requires a shortened form of presentation so it's easier to misread and for Google to allege that you misread it. For example, they could claim that they meant "offer the service" as "offer it to someone for free", I.E. it's not a limited-time free trial, but not that it would exist in perpetuity. Whether they meant that or not, if they can convince a judge that they could have meant that and you can't prove that they didn't at the time, they'll likely get away with it. Even if you could introduce new laws to add restrictions on this sort of thing, what could you do that would remove sneaky uses of language without having a bunch of unintended consequences enriching lawyers?
This is why something needs to be done by the big players. Offering services like this at a loss to draw people in. Wait a few years until they are so embedded they won't want to leave, then BAMMM, change the service to a paid for one. So those getting it free and having shaped their small company round it now have to fork out money they can't afford.
I had gsuit after I left a company that was in bed with it, I mean using it. Wanted to keep the knowledge heaven forbidden another company was foolish enough to buy into gsuite. I then discovered for only a couple of extra pounds a month I could get the business package, keep just one user and get unlimited drive space. I could use that drive space as backup storage. Cheaper that gdrive 2tb a year package. And cheaper than OneDrive 1tb package. Was only £11 a month. Did that for about a year or 2 until Google decided they were changing all packages. Everyone would have to decide what they needed and move. If I wanted to continue with unlimited drive space I'd have to move to an enterprise license, even for just one user.
Fuck that. I cancelled it. Funny thing was the past company was on the cheapest package per user to give the illusion it was cheaper than going to MS365 (it wasn't) with the changes in packages they will def have been forced onto the higher cost tier.
I have been using it for years for the storage, they sent emails for 2 years to switch, but this year said it would be changed after a specific date if i didn't do it (giving a discount). With the discount its around 30p more, after the discount ends it will be around £5 more / month.
For 'unlimited' storage (until its not) its not a bad price, I do have the 'minimum' number of users subscribed (have multiple people sharing). So do get over that limit.
That's what happened with Demon email. The service included in the subscription was dropped by Vodafone - with no reduction in the price. It was outsourced to NamesCo - which was then a separate charge subscription. The actual email service was effectively further outsourced to Microsoft with reduced capabilities.
Then the Demon domain was closed - and NamesCo charged a new subscription for a personal domain to continue accessing your NamesCo/Microsoft email service - for which you had already paid. Since then the email and domain annual charges have regularly increased. The latest charge for the NamesCo/Microsoft email service alone is now nearly £80.
I have a visceral feeling of being ripped off.
If a legitimate business agreement is made, then it is important that such an agreement be enforced regardless of its content (so long as it remains legitimate). If an entity cannot trust that the government will enforce such agreements, then those agreements have no meaning. Thus, the entity cannot make decisions based on their agreements with others.
Ergo, the government must enforce agreements to facilitate economic stability.
I've not read the contract that implemented this service, but I can virtually guarantee it doesn't say "It's free forever and it means everything". Lawyers are smart enough not to give that kind of guarantee. Whether or not they knew back in 2006 that it would go commercial only, and it's been long enough that they might have thought it could stay free forever, they also knew they might have to change what people were getting for free and would have written the contract accordingly. If it really does say "free forever", then you've found the lawyers with the least foresight and have fun with that.
A pedantic point, but one that might be relevant: to be enforceable, a contract must provide something of value to both parties. Were the price a symbolic one pound or dollar a year, that would be very different than giving away something for free.
Granted, that may not conform to your or my understanding of what is fair, and it certainly does not feed my own schadenfreude toward Google generally. But what you and I believe to be fair, and what the law stipulates, are not always the same thing.
If the contract says, explicitly or implicitly, that, for instance, Google gets to extract/consume/analyze user data - or if Google performed those self-serving functions regardless of contractual agreement - then the bidirectional value is established. A good lawyer should have that covered.
A good lawyer might equally make the argument that Google's opportunity to compete in the market is implicit in the agreement and thus similarly establishes benefit.
That's why the suit makes the point that the users contributed to the development of the software through their feedback, and that their contribution was valuable. Without valuable "consideration", there would be no contract for the Court to enforce.
The T&Cs will have absolved Google of liability and thus of future commitments. The economics and contracts of product tests are well established. If the plaintiffs are very lucky there will be an out of court settlement (discounted G Suite for x months) otherwise the case will probably be thrown out for lack of merit. If they're unlucky it will drag on for years and they may even face costs.
If you want something reliable, roll your own.
Yes, it costs money. If you have a company, you're supposed to make money.
So host yourself, or be subject to the whims of multi-billion dollar behemoths who change their minds without you having any say in it.
I wish you luck with your complaint. I'm pretty sure there's some small text in there somewhere that will get Google off scott free.
Spam filtering? Nigerian princes & the like no longer get through Microsoft's filtering, it's true. But emails allegedly from Microsoft regularly do. If they can't work out which emails they sent and which they didn't it's not really that good.
Having your own domain (although in my case I let Mythic Beasts run it) has the advantage of setting up as many aliases as you like so that if one is abused you can slam the door and be aware of whoever it was who abused the address they were given.
I recently was forced to move to a shiny new laptop(*), which entailed moving up a notch on the O365 enterprise licensing.
A couple of weeks later I received a notification from 'Microsoft' to check my licensing entitlements. I nearly clicked the link, but luckily I checked before clicking and discovered they were going to a misspelling of 'office.com'
The email had passed O365's scanner!
(and those link were even 'protected'!... though I didn't get to test the quality of the protection)
(*)MS Surface with just a single USB-C port, replacing a desktop with umpteen USB and other ports!)
The (Demon) Namesco email service is effectively outsourced to Microsoft. Apparently you can now only have a maximum of 100 alias email addresses. You also have to login to the Microsoft dashboard in order to add a new one - no more "on the fly" unique addresses for each new supplier..
Also if you want to stop specific legitimate addresses being diverted to Junk Mail - then you apparently have to pay more to subscribe to Microsoft enhanced spam filtering features
Mail filters, et al. are one of the few examples of what is essentially crowdsourcing: multiple players contribute to public grey and blacklists and corpuses of identifiers of spam. Most of the work was done before commercial e-mail services were established, which is why, Microsoft's proposal to charge per e-mail was so soundly rejected.
"From 2006 until 2012, in order to convince potential users to leave well-developed suites of services offered by Google's competitors (eg, Microsoft Office),"
Not that I want to give Google a break, but come on, that's a stretch. Besides which, I didn't think the online apps really existed prior to around 2011-2012. We moved our students to Live@EDU in 2009, and it seems like it was around 2012 when we were force-marched into Office365.
Even in 2022, does anyone consider Office or Office365 to be "well developed"? "Frequently borked" maybe. "Often upgraded" certainly. "Well developed"? Not at all. If it were, MS wouldn't constantly be fucking with it.
I think that question should be asked of Steve Bannon who will probably be indicted for perjury following his recent trial and that is after the judge warned him to tell the truth.
His lies have cost him almost $150M so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWTKE_VvNZg
> I think that question should be asked of Steve Bannon
And Alex Jones (Damaging Alex Jones texts mistakenly sent to Sandy Hook family’s lawyers).
I setup 3 of these accounts for relatives families, which was one of the use-cases that Google gave originally.
My sister's family has one based on a domain name from their surname, then they've all got their own google account under that - its a great solution. I never convinced them to actually use it this way, but they could have had family calendars so they could all see what each other were up to for planning things.
It works brilliantly for a family, I don't understand why Google don't have an equivalent product now.
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