• nucleative@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    6 个月前

    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.

    • Manalith@midwest.social
      3·
      6 个月前

      I was checking recently for a side thing I’m helping with and Google’s base tier is $7/month/user vs Microsoft’s Business Basic, so no desktop apps, but basically fully equivalent to Google was $6/month/user. I was honestly flabbergasted.

      • nucleative@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 个月前

        Interesting, that’s got to be intentional. Microsoft was so slow to webbify their Office suite (and probably thought why should we?it’s printing money!) that they lost out on a generation of startup companies.

        The thought of switching back to Microsoft hasn’t even crossed my mind since I moved everything to Google around a decade ago. But now I’m actively de-googling because they’re starting to mess with the core solutions.

        • Manalith@midwest.social
          1·
          6 个月前

          Personally I’d go with something else entirely, but for a nonprofit both those tiers are free for up to like 300 users which is hard to say no to

  • ch00f@lemmy.world
    80·
    6 个月前

    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.

  • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    6 个月前

    Since Brian hadn’t already cancelled Google for being awful in every other way, this is exactly the push he needs to stop giving them money and switch to better, cheaper options.

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
    71·
    6 个月前

    The soaking of customers has kicked into second gear. This is a great time to degoogle, as it will only be made more difficult

    • DandomRude@lemmy.worldEnglish
      531·
      6 个月前

      Google Workspace (GMail, Meet, Calendar Drive, Docs, Sheets, …) is a popular alternative to MS365 among companies.

        • tiramichu@sh.itjust.works
          56·
          6 个月前

          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.

          • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
            5·
            6 个月前

            when AI came around, they realized ai is costing too much, so they have to force it on customers to make them pay off thier debt.

  • Kühlschrank@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    6 个月前

    Adobe is doing this too and unless their AI is going to fix the legacy bugs the company clearly doesn’t care enough to fix then it’s not good enough to cost more.

  • BigMacHole@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    6 个月前

    OBVIOUSLY the ONLY reason why FIRING YOUR WORKFORCE and Replacing it with ONE AI is MORE Expensive is because of TAXES!

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    6 个月前

    Why sign up in the first place?

    The only reason I still have a gmail account is that the old people in my family would lose track of me if I dropped it.

    • forkDestroyer@infosec.pubEnglish
      3·
      6 个月前

      Most people have had these accounts from before AI was in the zeitgeist. They’re essentially feeling locked in or too lazy to change.

    • Aganim@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 个月前

      I’d very much like to, but so far I haven’t found anything which beats Google’s free Non-profit plan. Our small association uses that, which basically gives access to everything Google has to offer: amongst others e-mail under your own domain, shared storage through Drive, a workable office suite, access to Google Meet and all that with central user management.

      As crappy as Google may be, when money is an issue that’s a deal that’s hard to ignore. 😞