Comment by jkaplowitz
3 days ago
Does this apply to the legacy free edition? I suspect not, since that edition is now only available for personal use and they mostly focus on Business and Enterprise use cases, but their public guidance isn't very clear. If it does apply, would we legacy free edition users be receiving Gemini under the Google Workspace Terms of Service preventing them from using our data for general AI training, or under the regular Google Terms of Service which might allow this?
(Tangent: I say "might allow this" because I don't know to what degree EU law requires some additional level of consent beyond accepting the Terms of Service for EU-based accounts like mine currently is, or requires them to give me an AI-specific opt-out despite having a free account. But this announcement doesn't change whatever EU law does or doesn't require, so that is unrelated to my main questions about which Gemini features will apply to the legacy free edition under which Terms of Service once this change rolls out.)
The legacy free edition includes the features of the 'Business Starter' plan, the most affordable option. In this table [1], you can find the features available for each plan.
Here are the details for the Business Starter plan specifically:
Gmail: Help me write, Side panel, Contextual smart replies (Coming soon).
Gemini app: Enterprise-grade security & privacy, Google Workspace extensions.
NotebookLM: Upload sources, create summaries and Audio Overviews, and Q&A.
I'm also milking Google with this.
[1] https://support.google.com/a/answer/15400543
I am aware that some of this is coming to the Business Starter plan, but where do you see that the legacy free edition always gets the features which the Business Starter plan gets? And do you know the answer to the question of which Terms of Service will apply to legacy free edition Gemini features?
Interesting that the Business Starter plan isn't getting Gemini Advanced according to that table. That omission isn't clear at all from their Google Workspace blog post about the announcement: https://workspace.google.com/blog/product-announcements/empo...
Yes, you’re right—there doesn’t seem to be any statement explicitly saying that the legacy free edition will always have the same features as the Business Starter plan, at least not that I could find.
However, I noticed that on my legacy free edition, new features were integrated around the same time they were shipped to the Business Starter plan. For example, when the Gemini app was launched for Workspace, it was added to my panel: https://imgur.com/a/QvROTiD
Interestingly, when I went to the admin panel to take the screenshot, I saw a banner with the OP announcement: https://imgur.com/a/CDgdrlB. It does say "en todas las ediciones de Workspace" (in all Workspace editions), but maybe not the one I currently have, haha (legacy free edition).
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There's no legacy free edition for personal use any more. That ship sailed in 2022. I do not believe there is a way to have it free after 2022. Free plans were converted to Business Starter.
Nope, I still have it, I know it wasn't abolished for existing users. You're right that they initially planned to get rid of it, but they backtracked. They set a deadline by which existing users had to confirm that they were using it for personal use if they wanted to keep it. Anyone who didn't click the confirmation button was indeed converted to a paid plan like you are saying, but those of us who did continue to have the legacy free edition.
Oh dear. Thank you stranger for telling me I missed my chance to milk more free stuff out of Google. I see plenty of other people on Reddit doing that successfully.
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They enabled a way to get a free plan of some sort, I still have it.
You can’t get new ones, but mine keeps existing. For now.