> I think in general it’s not a good idea to use free services for businesses, but in my mind it means that Google makes pretty big changes and don’t care if it disrupts you. Microsoft doesn’t do this or rarely does. If anything they start high and drop. Starting free and climbing is not good.
Wow, I could not have stated it better myself. AWS is also like Microsoft in that they start high and commit to only dropping price. They also seem to do a pretty good job at customer service which Google has a reputation for lacking (although that is Amazon's bread and butter).
Actually, on this score I think they've been pretty reasonable -- generous, even. Free "beta" G Suite accounts (where you got x users, where x declined over time for new sign ups) have remained active and with the same number of users they got when they first signed up. As long as they are actively in use.
Unlike many other companies' free/beta offers, Google has made no excessive push to free/beta users out of their accounts. Of course, they do keep trying to upsell you, e.g. in the administrator management console or whatever they're calling it.
All the same, yeah, relying on a "free" account for a business is probably not a good idea.
And, you get no tech support beyond reading their help pages.
But I don’t think they’ve ever dropped products entirely. Although hangouts has been titled a bunch of different things.