You can still get a free Standard Google Apps Account with one free email address instead of 10.

See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/google-appengine/pVZfd...

Just created an account via this link and it doesn't look like the number of users is limited to 1. Have my own user account and was able to create two additional test accounts.

You can still setup a forwarding address and change the reply-to address, so users can use regular Gmail for free. It just means that your company will not have control over the account.

Unfortunately, I don't think threatening to leave when you're not paying anything is really a threat at all. $50/year per year is still pretty reasonable for the services provided.

The other option is that Google retires this feature completely, as they've done with other services people might have been willing to pay for, and that seems worse as you have no choice.

We're not paying nothing per year, we're paying almost $10,000 per year.

I understand this is effectively nothing for google; my point was that the reason we signed up for GA to begin with was directly related to my experience with it as a free way of hosting my personal domains' email.

I doubt google would have made the decision without considering the advertising impact of the free product.

> Microsoft's equivalent offering is free:

Something we should all be learning from this is that it's free for now.

But the Microsoft's service is nothing like Google Apps. I use both ( for different domains of course ) and Google Apps' service is still pretty practical. Even if you just compare Gmail and the simple services they provide us with.

Its an annoyance at times setting live domains correctly. Also it doesn't support a catch all email address. :(

I was considering moving from Google Apps to the offering from Microsoft when they released the new outlook.com, however http://domains.live.com doesn't support a catch all email address and I really can't remember all the email addresses I've put out into the wild.

Never thought I'd see the day when Google forced me into Microsofts' arms. Wow.

http://domains.live.com was actually far simpler and faster to setup than a free Google Apps account - which I've done probably 20 times and still struggle to figure out each time. MS version took me about two minutes and was extremely easy to understand - and I can't recall the last time I've signed up for an MS web product. Probably Hotmail in 2002 or something.

Great job Big G! lol

I am pretty sure you stole this post right out of my head. First it was the removal of the left sidebar search criteria e.g. search by date as well as removing the image search options e.g. search by image size. Now, Google takes away their free apps plan. I am about to launch a startup/service and the integration of Google apps was going to be part of it. Now, it looks like the integration of Microsoft's live/office services are going to take the place of Google Apps.

Oh well...