YouTube Premium Family Plans for Legacy G-Suite users

[kpkuk]

Recently, Google kindly allowed personal/family G-Suite accounts to continue with their custom domains without charge. I think that was the right thing to do, given the length of time some of us have had these in place.

However, what does NOT seem reasonable, is that it's not possible to sign up to a YouTube Premium Family Plan using our legacy G-Suite accounts. Now that the ONLY people who could/should be using those legacy accounts ARE personal and family users, it would make sense for those now to be allowed to subscribe to all and any of the personal plans, such as the YouTube Premium family plan.

Google - could you please pass this request on, and provide some kind of update? You're actually losing subscription money, because my only choice at present is to use other services, such as Spotify, which doesn't limit it in that way. I'd prefer to subscribe to YouTube Premium, but not if I have to buy all members of my family individual plans!

Thanks.

[christiannewman]

Agree! Free legacy G Suite solves the immediate challenge, but doesn't solve for the fact that there are millions of dollars per month on the table from Google Workspace users (legacy free and otherwise) who would instantly subscribe to Youtube Premium if it were available to them.

Also, support for Family Link parental controls.

In short, business and personal products need to be compatible with one another, because we're all people with professional and personal needs.

[kpkuk]

Indeed - and there's a whole host of things that have previously (and
still) blocked for G-Suite/Workspace users, such as the ability to do
things as simple as rate/review Play Store apps.

[zenzic]

After paying for Google Music and then YouTube Music for years for my family, I finally got fed up and switched to Spotify. I'm tired of being treated like dirt by Google and plan to transition everything from them eventually. It just blows me away how they've treated their most loyal supporters.

[SigmaOK]

Totally agree, I have just run into this, after using Google Family for 10+ years, I now cannot setup Youtube, etc.  Ridiculous, I want to dump Google for everything now, but both my son's, wife, and sister use YouTube and their content is not on Spotify.  Now the boy is working in a place where he can listen to podcasts, but his phone won't last with a day's charge without Premium.  So what am I to do?  I have to create a second account for everyone just for YouTube.  Nuts!!!  We are also now going to lose all of our YouTube preferences, subscriptions, etc.  So bloody angry!

[RichT]

Absolutely rediculous situation and so frustrating as a legacy Gsuite user.  My family have been with google for years, are really bought into the whole ecosystem, but are essentially forced to use other tools for family safety and use Spotify for music because google wont permit a family to subscribe to it's family plan on youtube.  Absolute disgrace.

[johnmcd]

Adding my voice to the request the Google treat G Suite account of all types as fist class accounts that can pay for YouTube Family, register for Nest, etc.

[kpkuk]

Sadly, it's incredibly hard to get any such request or comment to Google. It's really like dealing with a black hole.

[thavadk]

Do there exist any roadmap plan to support youtube family license plan for Gsuite users?

[tomst]

Same question here. WTH? I doubt huge Workspaces would benefit from it as you can add up to 5 family members. Limit the thing to one subscription per Workspace - sounds good for me.

[hmell]

Yes, it's very frustrating.  I have a personal Google account that I used to subscribe to the family plan and share it with my family and to my work account.  I get the invitation email, but when I try to join I get the "Family groups aren’t available for Google Workspace accounts" popup message.

The second thing that's happening is that I have a Google Pixel phone that is supplied by the company and because it's a company phone the main account is my Google Workspace account.  I'm logged into YouTube Music with my personal account, but I can't use the voice activation on Android Auto to play music because the system is detecting my Google Workspace account rather than using the app with the account that is assigned to it.

Logic seems to escape these decision makers at Google.

[kpkuk]

Ah - that problem with Android Auto I don't have. Mine is also connected to my Workspace account, but voice control works perfectly, for navigation, selecting music, sending messages, etc. Are you sure this isn't an admin option that your administrators have disabled for you?

[hmell]

No, because I'm the admin.  Lol

....and don't even get me started on the Android work profiles not being allowed to backup devices.

[icrew]

I find it's often helpful to think of Google as a collection of fiefdoms rather than anything more organized. Not that that realization helps much, but it does--to me at least--explain a lot...

[kpkuk]

As is also true of Microsoft. Look at their appalling attempts to make it look like everything uses the same authentication. It's awful.

But yes - there will be some platform reason why Google aren't able to offer this. I suspect it's more technical than political, but you'd really expect them to be able to fix it.

[sbglasius]

I am also one of the people who have had Google Workspace for a decade. It is hard to understand why things like linking Google Home accounts, getting YouTube premium family subscriptions and other things are not possible with the legacy accounts. We have to resort to normal gmail accounts to get simple things working. Why?

[sbglasius]

Almost 5 months later and still no response? 🤔

[JonM]

This is ridiculous. I cant even buy a YT premium for my workspace account? I just need to avoid the ads which waste my time. I have a YT family account, and I don't mind paying extra for the workspace account, how is this not an option google? How much $ are you leaving on the table every month Google!?

[teamlouish]

My G Suite legacy account allows me to buy YT premium, I just cant buy Family.  You aren't able to buy YT premium at all?

[johnmcd]

Add me to the chorus of people who log in via a custom domain but try to avoid YouTube due to the ads / no way to pay for a family/premium plan on a custom domain.

[rribeirorj]

I'm just another fool fooled by Google Workspace who has a *family* domain and can't subscribe to *Family* Youtube

[fchorney]

Come on google, it's 2023 why are you restricting workspace accounts from things like this. Absolutely infuriating 

[icrew]

In response to one person above, about 6 months ago, I posted:

"I find it's often helpful to think of Google as a collection of fiefdoms rather than anything more organized. Not that that realization helps much, but it does--to me at least--explain a lot..."

To elaborate on that a bit, from the point of view of an outsider that's worked with them a bunch over the past dozen years or so: The different groups at Google largely march to their own beat, only collaborating when it suits them. That goes doubly for "non-core/consumer" Google services, and triply for YouTube, which is still largely treated as an independent subsidiary than part of the larger Google organization.

Or, putting all this far more succinctly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

[PMA]

I was planning for subscribing YouTube premium. But without the family plan: no way!

Wake up Google! Your paying customers are not cheaters of the system. You made the system so.

[cdlftw]

I suspect there's something, somewhere deep inside some terms and conditions about not collecting data from "business" accounts, hence no YouTube premium for Legacy plans.

[PMA]

It has to be something else. I was able to subscribe to YouTube Premium
with my account. Only the family offer is missing. I don't think that
families have to sacrifice even more personal data...

[cryptochrome]

Youtube Premium works fine with Google Workspace accounts. Only family accounts aren't available. For obvious reasons. 

[PMA]

What are the obvious reasons? That a family member uses the work email for youtube? Blasphemy! Because you can not even invite a Google suite account as a family member!

Or why can not a family use Google suite just for the custom domain?

[cryptochrome]

It's a business product not intended for families. It's not supported. Get a Google One account instead and you'll be able to enjoy all Google products intended for consumers and families. 

[zenzic]

Back in the dark ages, when "Google Apps" was first announced, Google offered free accounts, encouraging it's use for friends and families to use.  Many of us did just this, setting up family domains.  Now ~20 years later, we are locked in with our digital lives tried to our Google email address.  Changing would not only be a monumental hassle, it would cost any media or other digital assets tired to it.  This was all done at Google's express invitation and with their full knowledge and support.

So it might be a good idea to know your history before you smugly treat us like idiots for expecting Google to follow through with what amounts to an implicit promise instead of kicking their original and most loyal supporters to the curb.

[cryptochrome]

No one treated you like an idiot. You were given facts you didn't like; that's not the same. I get everything you are saying, and it's a bad situation for you to be in, but you are wasting your time - and everybody else's - by posting on this forum, which is intended for Google Workspace business customers and that has next to zero Googlers participating. You won't be heard. And even if you were, I can guarantee you that Google will not change Google Workspace in the way you would like it to be changed. 

Finding a way out, like switching to Google One, would be a much better investment of your time. And if you want to keep trying to convince Google, the Feature Ideas section would probably give you more traction.

[kpkuk]

Not really for obvious reasons. We're talking about legacy G-Suite users
here, not Workspace accounts as a whole. It would be pretty easy to allow
family subscriptions too, with the same limit on number of members.

[cryptochrome]

I don't think it would be easy, from a technical perspective, as it would most likely require development work, legal due diligence and a host of dependencies that would need to get resolved. 

G Suit legacy, from a technical perspective, is the exact same product as Google Workspace. 

Google Workspace is a business product not intended for families. 

[renevnmook]

An absolute disgrace. Got Workspace (Gsuite Legacy) for over a decade, but have to use an adblocker just to enjoy YT.  

Make Youtube Premium available for Workspace users. WTH is that so hard to do?

[kpkuk]

I've come to the conclusion that this is entirely commercial, rather than technical. There is no incentive to provide this to legacy Google Workspace users. It IS annoying, but after so long, I can't see Google changing this. Remember - they also wanted to kill the legacy free GSuite or Workspace users completely, and only reversed that at the last minute, and clearly reluctantly.

[johnmcd]

What's disappointing to me is that they don't want Google Workspace users to use so many of Google's products, not just YouTube.

We tried to set up a Nest for a small business (Google Workspace) customer, and Nest also just flat doesn't let you use it with the associated Google Workspace email accounts. You literally can't setup and share a Nest without making fake @gmail.com accounts for managing the Nest.

I don't know why Google treats Google Workspace and gmail accounts so differently. Google's own services are the only place on the internet where Google Workspace email accounts are actually a liability. Everywhere else they are just a normal email address.

[David7070]

Maybe this answer is already known to you all (or said above): I have 1 YouTube account that is owned by my G-suite and my personal Google account. You can share your YouTube account with a personal (non-workspace) Google account and login to your youtube account via that personal Google account and activate and use Premium that way. Go to YouTube "Settings" -> "Add or remove Managers" -> "Manage Permissions" and add a personal Google account as owner. Then click your profile picture in YouTube and click "Switch account" -> "Add account" and login via your personal Google account. Your channel should be visible again (maybe search under "Switch account" again for it) -> activate YouTube Premium and always login to YouTube via your personal Google account.

[Marcodallas]

Same issue here...

1) I've been a Youtube Premium subscriber since inception through my Gmail.com account
2) I've recently purchased a domain through Google so I can migrate to an email address that's a lot more personal.

3) I'm now unable to subscribe to Youtube Premium - Family Plan because the system assumes I run a business, which isn't the case...

Google staff is you read this:   Personalized domain != business owned. 

As a fan of Google, this is extremely frustrating and disappointing.  I don't see any other options but to switch hosting provider & streaming services for that reason. 

[Herfen]

I use Google Products since they exist. Search, Google Sidebar, Google Videouploader. That's how it all began for me. They hooked me with Google Aps for your domain. Years later and so much has changed:      

• Domains are no longer supported by Google itself     
• Free Gsuit now called at least until this post Workspace I used it free since 2003 - 2005(don't remember) until 2023 and have to pay for my family now(kicked brother and sister and parents out of my worksuite to be able to afford it).

But there's still no kind of Bundle Price or awareness that lot's of families still use Googles Workspace. There was once a Version especially for families so at some point in time they where aware.  

I tried iCloud, Qnap-Cloud, Microsoft-Cloud, AWS Solutions and     

• began to transfer all Google Data to Nextcloud    
• I use Plex as Moviehost(Google Play Movies/Youtube doesn't alow to play purchased 4K movies higher than 720p on Linux),    
• XBox Cloud since they cancelled stadia,    
• OpenOffice on a Hetzner Server as Cloud Office    
• tidal as Music Streaming Service.  

Youtube can't be fully replaced right now(got a family Plan too)     

• I subscribed to floatplane and use GrayJay(AdFree Youtube).    
• All my Domains had to be hosted elsewhere F.E. Namecheap/Cloudflare cause Google cancelled that service too.    
• I stoped buying Pixel phones since the 5 cause it was slow trash and cause of the lies around project Solie afterwards.    
• The 7 Assistant Speakers and Monitors I own started to get more unreliable every year so I use Home Assistant and Tasker instead.  

All that isn't verry comfortable for me and my family.  

BUT GOOGLE STOPED BEEING USEFULL. 

It's ridiculous how many flaws are cluttered all over there Services right now.      

• Drive can't index files right.    
• Music shows pirated music or bad quality files    
• Purchased DRM Videos can't be played well on Linux.    
• Assistant can' recognize who I am forgets Alarms, timers, Calender Notifications or how to turn lights of or on.    
• Photos is horriffic to use cause there are still no structuring tools to use
• Cheap Chromebooks are unupgradable manufactured eWaste soon burned in Africa to harvest parts polluting the air, Ground and waters.   All new Generations growing up right now are experienceing a world in which they hear their parents cursing about Google on a daily base. My financial advise: Go short on Google longterm!  soooooooo bye Google.   It feels like the company slowly abd silently dies from inside.

[larkinja]

If google is paying attention I would second this as well.  I would like to remind them that like me, some of us use a google workspace for personal use as well.  I pay google for a custom email account for each of my family using workspace.  Can't say I really understand why they wouldn't want to offer it to workspace users anyway.