Google Says It's Time for Longtime Small-Business Users To Pay Up

Google is charging some small businesses for email and other apps after more than a decade of free use. Business owners say Google is being callous. The New York Times: When Google told some small businesses in January that they would no longer be able to use a customized email service and other workplace apps for free, it felt like a broken promise for Richard J. Dalton Jr., a longtime user who operates a scholastic test-prep company in Vancouver, British Columbia. "They're basically strong-arming us to switch to something paid after they got us hooked on this free service," said Mr. Dalton, who first set up a Google work email for his business, Your Score Booster, in 2008. Google said the longtime users of what it calls its G Suite legacy free edition, which includes email and apps like Docs and Calendar, had to start paying a monthly charge, usually around $6 for each business email address. Businesses that do not voluntarily switch to a paid service by June 27 will be automatically moved to one. If they don't pay by Aug. 1, their accounts will be suspended. While the cost of the paid service is more of an annoyance than a hard financial hit, small-business owners affected by the change say they have been disappointed by the ham-handed way that Google has dealt with the process. They can't help but feel that a giant company with billions of dollars in profits is squeezing little guys -- some of the first businesses to use Google's apps for work -- for just a bit of money. "It struck me as needlessly petty," said Patrick Gant, the owner of Think It Creative, a marketing consultancy in Ottawa. "It's hard to feel sorry for someone who received something for free for a long time and now are being told that they need to pay for it. But there was a promise that was made. That's what compelled me to make the decision to go with Google versus other alternatives." Google's decision to charge organizations that have used its apps for free is another example of its search for ways to get more money out of its existing business, similar to how it has sometimes put four ads atop search results instead of three and has jammed more commercials into YouTube videos. In recent years, Google has more aggressively pushed into selling software subscriptions to businesses and competed more directly with Microsoft, whose Word and Excel programs rule the market. After a number of the longtime users complained about the change to a paid service, an initial May 1 deadline was delayed. Google also said people using old accounts for personal rather than business reasons could continue to do so for free. But some business owners said that as they mulled whether to pay Google or abandon its services, they struggled to get in touch with customer support.

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