Google
Apps, **
Longer Free For
Small Organizations
Google Apps started back in 2006 as an experimental feature that allowed you to create Gmail accounts for custom domains.
Google added support for other services like Calendar and
Google Talk, created a special version for educational institutions, then it launched a "Premier Edition" for enterprises, which included support and a service level agreement for 99.9% Gmail availability. As
Google constantly added features to
Google Apps and the numbers of paid customers grew to
more than 5 million businesses, the
Free version became more limited, the number of users dropping from 100 to 50 and then to 10.
**w
Google an**unced that the
Free version of
Google Apps is
** longer available for new users. Existing users are **t affected by this change and
Google Apps for Education continues to be available. Google's explanation for dropping the
Free Google Apps for
Small Organizations is rather vague: "Businesses quickly outgrow the basic version and want things like 24/7 customer support and larger inboxes. Similarly, consumers often have to wait to get new features while we make them business-ready."
Well, **t everyone needed customer support, SLAs, migration tools or other business features and
Google Apps was a simple way to create email addresses for your domain and use Gmail to manage them. Why pay $50/user/year for
features you don't need?
It's obvious that
Google wants to focus on paid customers and the
Free Google Apps was just a**ther thing to support. **w that
Google Apps has more than 5 million business customers,
Google **
Longer needs the
Free Google Apps to attract new users. The
Free Google Apps was just a burden that made things more complicated.
