My guess is that killing (edit: free) workspace was more about reducing maintenance and technical debt costs for users rather than raising revenue.<p>Google is also unlikely to kill Gmail because Gmail is the incentive for users to be signed into a Google Account, which allows them to target ads to you. That's a critical anchor.
To a first approximation there is no market for paid consumer email. Google, Microsoft, Apple, None of them offer it.<p>They may offer expanded storage, but that's shared with other products and a different motivation. They may offer paid email as well, but that's always got a business focus, at least for SMEs.<p>Yes, companies like Fastmail, Hey, and many small email providers will offer paid personal email accounts, but even these put an emphasis on business use, and they are many orders of magnitude smaller than the big email providers.<p>Gmail will remain free as long as email is expected to be free by users. Gmail is the ad-supported free product, and Google Workspace is the no-advertising, business focused version that you can pay for.<p>(Disclaimer, I'm a Googler but have no inside information on this, these are my opinions)
> Ask HN: How long until Google charges for private Gmail accounts?<p>They...already do. It's called Google One, further being pushed by the progressive narrowing of what doesn't count against the 15GB free storage limits.
This won't happen. A Gmail account is the gateway for Android (most people using or getting started with Android would assume that a Gmail account is necessary to set it up). As long as Google doesn't give up on Android, YouTube and Maps, the free Gmail accounts aren't going anywhere. There's no point letting some other provider capture usage or other information (through email notifications) from these platforms.<p>What could happen is that the space for each mailbox may be restricted, and linked accounts may be considered for the total space used by a person. Unused accounts may also be pruned quicker with hardly any notice.
I would be amazed if they stopped offering regular Gmail for free because it hooks users into the Google platform and encourages them to create an account. What I can see though is they might start charging for services that currently come with Gmail e.g. you might find they start charging for Google Drive and Google Docs etc. Some manager will come along as say "Hey Microsoft charges for this stuff so why can't we?"
Aren't they already? At the top of my inbox is a message informing me that I'm almost out of space. My infinitely expanding mailbox limit from Google has stopped expanding. A good things come to an end.
Never, aside from the existing space limits. That's like asking how long until Google charges per search. They monetize it effectively and efficiently already and losing those users would devastate that, along with the stickiness of account management/SSO.
Google would only do that if Microsoft and maybe some other big free email providers would do it as well.<p>It would not be for monetization, but to start to tie addresses to well known identities. A coordinated action from the biggest providers.<p>Addresses like htfan199100@gmail.com (the Managing Director and Head of Investment Banking of the Emirates Investment Bank in Dubai who sent me an email with my public IP as the email subject) would disappear, since paying 20€/year for such a purpose would likely not be lucrative anymore. They'd move to some other shady domains which could easily be blacklisted.
I would gladly pay for Gmail if it guaranteed that my Google account won't be disabled when some "AI" script considers it suspicious and if Google finally fixes issues with spam coming right from their @gmail.com addresses.
I wouldn't put it past them, but Gmail is quite the loss leader for Google. And unlike other loss leaders like YouTube (let's face it, ads and $9.99 rentals aren't gonna compensate for the countless live streams eating bandwidth), I bet it's relatively cheap for them to run. Once you have Gmail, email still being a personal necessity, then you've got an account for all of Google's services.<p>However, they've got people trapped. If they began charging, I think the vast majority of people would roll over and pay.
I've always assumed that Gmail gave Google the opportunity to see how people actually type (use words), so they can link topics together and improve their search capabilities.
The value of this would exceed the cost of email I would imagine.<p>Also, if you use iCloud+, then you can attach a domain to your account and use iCloud email. Obviously only good for individual usage, but it's been extremely reliable for me.
I hope soon; the value in private account things such as this is "a human on the other end to beg, plead, or yell at when things go wrong."<p>I've done this for nearly 2 decades and it has saved my bacon more than a few times. I think I know what I'm doing with running my own site and services, except when I really really don't.<p>My go to example is; "My Dad literally deleted all of his email and, to this day I have no clue how it happened." By working with a midranger (Hostdime) who knew what they were doing, I got on chat, and they were like, yup, it's gone. But what we can do is roll your entire deal back a day.<p>Now, I do IT and am familiar with things -- but I had no clue they had this capability. Yes, it cost me extra, a whopping $15, but so worth it.
I don't think they will, it would be suicide (their business model relies on the fact that they can collect data from you. It's free because you are the product !).<p>Yet, it's still useful to keep in mind that they can disable your account at any time (with _all_ associated services i.e. your email, contact list, youtube history, Drive documents, etc) without any appeal (e.g. because AI would have triggered supposed misconduct from you or because AI may think you are not the genuine account owner !). Because of that, it's always good practice to periodically backup your data (e.g. using takeout.google.com, noting that the export from GMail is half-broken with non-unicode characters - which is why I backup it with IMAP...).
No pb, gogol blocked my software (aka noscript/basic (x)html web browsers) a few years ago (for authentication, account creation, etc), then I now have my own smtp server (a raspberry pi with a 32GB usb key sitting next to my IAP modem, and hopefully, soon a RISC-V mini-computer, to help free the world from ARM toxic PI). I did even write the smtp software myself in lean C89 with benign bits of c99/c11.<p>Now, they put in the "spam" folder all the emails I send to ppl using their servers... even though many of those ppl removed my emails from the "spam" folder.
Google won't charge for gmail because it's a treasure trove of our most intimate secrets that are used as grist for it's advertising mill.<p>Besides, the millisecond they do so I'm switching to someone like protonmail. The only reason I still use gmail today is that it's free and the inertia to move is huge. Google charging for gmail would be like meta charging for facebook. Our data is worth so much more to them than a few bucks a month in a service charge.
I already pay for google to manage a custom domain's emails at $5/email. What does "private" mean in this case? Am I missing a free tier option?
You need a GMail account to use an Android phone, so I'd say the chances of that happening are pretty slim. There are a sizable margin of Android devices that exist for the purpose of being cheap gateways into other paid services. If, overnight, you suddenly needed a subscription service just to <i>use</i> the phone, I'm willing to bet a substantial number of them would immediately go into the trash.
I don't think it will ever happen. That being said, I have been wanting to move to Outlook.com, but I have a custom domain email. Currently it's allowed in Gmail because it's using an external smtp server from Mailgun. But in order to add/accept a custom domain in Outlook you have to have your domain with GoDaddy (if you aren't O365) which I simply refuse to do.
I'm confused. AFAIK you can use google docs for free. What you can't do for free is register your own domain and then register that with Google Workspace. Am I wrong?<p>The first, using docs, is you as an individual user and is still free AFAIK.<p>The 2nd, is you having an organization with multiple users and admin accounts that can control what those user can do with docs and other google services, (like can't share outside the org, can transfer docs between accounts like when someone leaves, etc....). This is the one that has not been free for a while and that Google recently tried to push a few legacy free users to be paid.<p>Personally I switched to paid from free long ago. As an individual user it's still worth it to me to pay Google a measly $6 a month to run my email for my domain. It's still my domain and I can switch if I need to. I back up my docs as well just in case. Further, their support as a paid user has been great so far. Every time I've contacted them they've gotten back to me quickly and been very helpful.
Google have lots of little, ill-fitting appendages attached to the mothership. Just like Apple have their App Store (a cash cow) and MS have Edge and a variety of awkward apps bogging Windows down. They don't fit in well with the overall image and vision of those companies and are not really sustainable long term. I think gmail is liable to get axed one day when google gets tired of it. I think that day is still a long way away. But like all of the above, i wonder if google takes (free) gmail seriously.
Yandex Mail has subscription plan for ad-free web interface. Incidentally, it is separate from Yandex Plus subscription (something like Amazon Prime for Yandex services).
Google already charges for continued use of private Google accounts that have exceeded their storage limit.<p>Users can create another account to keep receiving mail, but you can't even configure the overflown old one to forward to the new one.<p>A strategy for using Gmail is to create a main account which you keep below the storage limit, always. Set up that main facade account to forward e-mail to some other Gmail account, and delete it.
We'll see the storage space for Google Drive being cut down drastically or features held back, long before they'll start thinking of charging for Gmail. The reason is that Gmail is part of their advertising platform.<p>For Gmail, I expect that they'll add more ads instead to make more money. Perhaps they'll try to squeeze more money out of companies that depend on email marketing.
They already do, just in another currency.<p>Can we please finally stop pretending these products are „free“?
I mean, at least in a community such as HN.
I would gladly pay if I knew I was going to get committed service. I live in fear that someday the Algorithm will decide I am naughty and lock me out of my digital life.<p>I have considered enrolling in a Workspace plan, but I hear any number of gotchas because it is not the happy path, and X workflow is not supported for paid plans. That is, a worse product, even if you pay.
It kinda already does because Gmail shares the storage space with all other Google services. I found that recently when I started getting message like please buy more storage or else you will not be able to receive emails. I got around that by deleting some old junk on my google drive but I wonder how long I would be able to do that in future.
In reality they already do via the max storage that comes with a free account, and this has fallen over the years I believe. Conceivably, they could lower this to the point where anyone who has had an account for more than 5 years will likely run out of room, which could be a big windfall revenue wise but will piss off users.
There are no successful competitors in the space that charge money. Who would be stupid enough to take a dominant market position that purely benefits them and attempt to monetize it? Email is a commodity market and it hasn't been shown that anyone is willing to pay for a premium en-masse.<p>I see no risk here.
In some way, Google is already charging for personal accounts via storage for Photos. I's risk to say it is the most relevant G service for a person/family these days. Far more relevant than email, which is becoming more and more irrelevant next to IMs and push notifications.
People would move as long as there are similar quality free services. I don't think they could get away with it. Maybe they can charge for archival storage if you break a big threshold that implies you're a power user with $$.
I would gladly pay for GMail as long as it includes an actual contract, where I would know my paid-for service is not going to be arbitrarily terminated for a random AI reason (or any reason, short of a legal requirement).
They already do, if you want more than 15GB of storage space.<p>They make it stupid hard to delete big e-mails quickly, and the interface is super super slow so that you just go "fuck it" and pay the $2/month
google deprecated the free "google apps for your domain" plan nearly a decade ago, so you probably don't have anything to worry about for a little while on personal gmail.
Free services which require login all easy tracking and spying. If folk paid for it then they'd not want to be spied on. We're the product because it's free.
They're already monetizing it by 1) charging for more storage 2) making it extremely easy and painless to upgrade to Google Workspace. Zero training needed.
I always wonder why Google don't start charging for Gmail accounts for non-OECD countries or other countries where the ad rate means they make a loss.
We "pay" for it now with ads and surveillance.<p>Would I welcome a pay tier where I'm still surveilled? No.<p>Would I welcome a pay tier without surveillance? Sign me up now.
larger question of what is the future of email, is there a major useful replacement coming, will privacy concerns in the provider or protocol force an update (a new snowden-type event), and why has their webmail interface gotten so clunky and bad
For anyone seeking a nice alternative to gmail and not so pricey I recommend Migadu: <a href="https://migadu.com" rel="nofollow">https://migadu.com</a>. I used them til this month as I moved to iCloud+ Mail with custom domains for convenience. Yet I really recommend Migadu to everyone! :)
Here's an OSS privacy-focused alternative for anyone needing to switch: <a href="https://forwardemail.net" rel="nofollow">https://forwardemail.net</a>
Free services will continue for as long as surveillance capitalism is legal, and advertising is profitable. The majority of their revenue comes from ads, i.e. YouTube, and ads in Gmail and on Google's SERP.
They probably already generates a lot of revenue from scanning user's emails. If they were to make Gmail a paid service, they would probably lose a lot of people. Moreover, they are not necessarily competitive against other established paid email services.
I'm more concerned that GMail will be shut down, just like most other useful Google products and services. They'll tell everyone to go use this messaging app they released last month.