Google is being sued for pulling the rug from under G Suite Legacy users’ feet

According to The Register, a class action lawsuit has been filed against Google for its decision to begin charging a fee for its G Suite Legacy service as it began to think about how it could fold loyal customers into the Workspace branding earlier this year. Citing a ‘breach of contract’, and ‘breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing’, among other things, early adopters of the service have demanded $5 million in the suit.

If you have the G Suite legacy free edition, you need to upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to keep your services

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As a refresher, Google said back in May that anyone who wanted to continue to use the tools at no cost as they’ve done for over a decade could only do so as an individual, and no longer as an organization or as a family. The transition to Workspace was set to take effect by May 1, 2022, and anyone who had not yet purchased a paid license to have their account converted over would be automatically “upgraded”, but not activated until a payment method was supplied.

For anyone who refused to set a debit or credit card on their account so they could be charged, the account which was previously free and then subsequently forcefully moved would be shut down two months later in July. needless to say, this made everyone quite upset. Now, it would seem they’ve taken to the legal system for reparations.

According to the filing, the plaintiff alleg that “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), Google made a promise to early adopters of Google Workspace. Google promised that such users would always be provided a free version of Workspace (including at least the features that the service had when these customers signed up) as long as Google offered the Workspace service.” Clearly, the forced move to a paid tier in the newly minted Workspace proves otherwise, leading those speaking to believe Google has gone back on their word, and well, they have!

Google forced Plaintiff and other customers whom Google had promised continuing free Workspace service to choose between: (a) paying for service; or else (b) having their Workspace service suspended, depriving them of this valuable and contractually-based benefit and requiring them to transfer to another service and risk losing valuable data they stored on Google’s systems as part of the service.

RegMedia

Were you a part of G Suite Legacy, and were you affected by this entire debacle? What are you and your family or organization doing now after 14 years of using these apps at no cost? Let me know in the comments. We’ll update this article if the lawsuit has any movement so that you know what to do next.