Google Apps, ** Longer Free For Small Organizations

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Google Apps, ** Longer Free For Small Organizations

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.

المصدر: Forums

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Google Apps< ** Longer Free For Small Organizations