The correct and only option is to cancel your plan. Fuck google.
There was a time when gsuite was a scrappy little service that gave you a serious option that wasn’t Micro$oft (which at the time was deep into shady monopolistic practices) at a fraction of the price with replacements that were good enough for most small businesses.
If memory serves, the initial price was around $20 or perhaps $50 a YEAR per user. It was a steal if you were used to paying 10 times that for an annual subscription to Microsoft Office Pro plus needing to support a local NT server running Microsoft Exchange and probably a file server that needed backups and antivirus and on and on.
As more and more businesses have gone SaaS and put the whole thing in the cloud, Google has capitalized on this by cranking up the prices while probably scanning and using our data for their benefits somehow (mostly without adding additional features… Google Sheets is nowhere close to feature parity with Excel).
Thankfully we now have way more FOSS and private cloud solutions such as Nextcloud.
I still can’t help but notice, however that feature-wise we really haven’t gone anywhere in 25 plus years.
Injecting AI buttons into Google Workspace or whatever they call it now is probably not a feature that too many of their customers are asking for. But in the never ending push to increase revenue, it seems like now we’re going to get it and that’s the justification for the latest price jump.
It was always the case that AI would be free or cheap to begin with, and it was always the case that prices will have to rise to cover their costs.
The way now is to cancel subscriptions. Show the companies pushing AI that there is no money to be made in it. Find another service that fits your needs, your ethical minimum, and your budget.
Cancel Google services, even the free ones, and find an alternative you truly like.
Then cancel I guess.
Why do they all act like AI is the holy grail ?? Phone update: here you go, AI. New app: here you go. AI. Websites: here you go. AI.
I’ve tried it, but AI sucks. All tech questions give non-working answers. Everything else, the AI always agree with you.
They’re also bundling AI with their most expensive tiers. More than likely logging 100% of that revenue towards AI to justify this whole boondoggle.
Google became prime enshitification too. You may only degoogle.
Cancel sounds great! 👌
Google wants to replace most of its features with gemini powered tools. This is just the beginning. They own youtube and of course they’re starting to train their models on that too, they have a deal with reddit so they’re also turning all known internet forums into a huge database.
It’s so weird because Gemini is one of the dumbest of these bots out there.
Because it’s training on reddit users.
they could make it when you opt out from AI features, you dont need to pay for the AI features. but they are Greedy so they will probably not do that.
They wouldn’t be able to make MONEY off of AI, otherwise, cause most people would decline it.
Oh yeah
Use Microsoft 365
Microsoft literally pulled this exact trick earlier this year. Gave me an email with a ‘your subscription is increasing from $100 to $150 this year so we can offer “AI” features’ and i was like ‘oh those exact features that forced me to roll back to a 6 month old version of office to get rid of because you cant just ‘toggle’ it off in settings, and specifically emailed you to tell you this, those features you mean?’. Turns out if you go to unsubscribe they offer you a ‘budget plan’ (or however they worded it) which doesnt include “AI” features for wow, only the same price it was already paying to get me to stay. What an offer.
I was doing the right thing by them but if your gunna take the piss mate, im putting on the hat and taking to the seas.
Wtf is google offering that you’re paying for anyway? advertising?
Google Workspace (GMail, Meet, Calendar Drive, Docs, Sheets, …) is a popular alternative to MS365 among companies.
🤢
Things change.
Ten years ago I joined a newly formed small company. They were all-in on the google suite for everything, and it was great. Gmail, docs, meet, all joined up really well and fully cloud so everyone could work just as easily from home as in the office, with no on-prem hardware or VPNs or anything. It made the work so productive.
But of course enshittification happens, corps get evil, and everything goes down the toilet.
These days I am degoogling as much as possible and would never choose g-suite again, either personally or for business, but 10 years ago for that small business it was a godsend.
