Before Google kills free G Suite accounts, why not offer a family email plan?

Some people who have been using the internet for a long time are facing a transition. In the early days of the business-focused productivity service, first called "Google Apps for Your Domain", then "G Suite", and now "Google Workspace", it was offered. From 2006 to 2012 users could make a free account with a custom domain, so their email ended with a domain they owned. Users who set up a free account years ago with no warning that they would eventually be charged for it are being pulled in an unfair way. It feels like data extortion to suddenly tell these people to pay up or lose everything, because they have all the data, emails, and purchases stored on these accounts.

After relenting somewhat, the company offered a vague escape hatch, promising that someday Legacy G Suite users could port their data and purchases to a free consumer Gmail account. Many of the important specific details of this transition plan are not public yet, but what is specific is the deadline for payment and account shutdowns, and users are just left to flap in the breeze while their anxiety builds.

Legacy G Suite users have no obvious upgrade path because of the fact that Google stopped pitching custom-domain email to consumers. In the past, there was nothing wrong with using G Suite for non-business purposes. There is a post on the internet that says that the service was launched after listening to feedback from thousands of small businesses, K-12 schools, nonprofits, universities, and even families with their own websites.

Why does this have to be so hard? An idea is to offer a family plan that supports a custom domain at a reasonable rate. This is not a crazy idea because all of the competitors offer this. In my conversations with people affected by the policy change, free G Suite users are not upset about paying for a custom email domain. They don't want to pay business rates for G Suite.

Let's compare the offerings of the two companies. Microsoft offers a Microsoft 365 Family plan, which is similar to the business offerings of Google Workspace. A six-person family gets $100 per year. It has access to all the Microsoft Office apps, a 50GB inbox, and a custom domain email account. The cheapest plan is $6 per month per user. If we match Microsoft's six user, one-year offering, that's $432 per year, and that's only with 30GB of cloud storage per user. The next tier up is $12 per user, per month, or $864 per year, if you have 2 terabytes of cloud storage.

Apple has a similar product, the iCloud+ subscription, which also offers custom email support at $1 per user per month. That is six times less than what Apple charges, and Apple is offering 20GB more per user.