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Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

googleenterprise.blogspot.com

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Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#51

Post by alanctgardner2 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #24

I really hate it when companies try to sugar coat a decision that is all downside for their customers. It may be really hard to do, but Google should just come out and say it: there is no upside for this to anyone except Google . It is not about giving you a better experience or making things more straightforward . It is all about Google deciding to maximize their profits at the expense of their users. That's fine, i…

This is a pretty pessimistic view. Customers are self-interested too: they want free content and services, but they also want absolute privacy, to ad-block everything, and generally cut off any possible revenue stream. This seems like it leads to a sort of local maxima where you produce the minimum quality required to drive users, with as little cost as possible.

By cutting off ad-supported free users, Google is attempting to pursue a global maxima: rather than making the best 'free-enterprise email/document sharing/whatever else it does because I only use it for email', they're now free to focus their efforts on paying customers. I suspect the one area where this will impact the most is customer service; Google is traditionally horrible because they're loathe to waste money on minimum wage call-centre employees to support loss-leader products. Now that Apps for Domains will be a first-class, revenue generating product, maybe they'll answer the damn phone.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#53

Post by lawdawg »

confluence wrote: post #41

So for hackers it's what? $50 a year for hosting + $10 a year of domain registration for vanity URLs - that's $5 a month. Don't see much of a problem here - I'm surprised they didn't do this sooner - I'm happy to pay for this service at that price - no problem.

whoa whoa whoa, but now its not FREE, and I'm entitled to awesome products for FREE.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#54

Post by ams6110 »

dbuxton wrote: post #23
dotBen wrote: post #8

Contrarian view... by offering One could argue that the removal of the free tier at this point is simply because they've created an entrenched position, but one could also suggest that this creates a modicum of opportunity for another player to try to enter this space. Certainly until today the $ size of the addressable market in the small business email space was practically $0 given Google's position. [discuss :)]

Still, $50/user/year doesn't give you that much room for manoeuvre as a startup...

Compared to what? You can provision your own apps and run your own services for less?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#55

Post by lawdawg »

georgemcbay wrote: post #43
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #18

I wonder if the cause of this is the support costs required for the free accounts? Obviously personal GMail is plug-and-play, but for someone who can't spell DNS, setting up a domain account was never quite drop-dead-simple enough. I suspect the goal here is to create a barrier to entry and prevent the inevitable support load of free users. There was an excellent post about this a while ago, where a developer reporte…

I doubt the support costs were very much. As with all things Google other than being an adsense buyer, support was basically "send us an email and we'll respond with a robo-faq that may or may not have anything to do with your question". And Google Apps was actually quite easy to setup, partly because Google documented it pretty well but mostly because many DNS providers would basically do a one-click Google Apps set…

Google Apps for Business has 24/7 phone support. Maybe you would know that if you actually used Google Apps for Business or read the blog post.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#56

Post by pyre »

michael_michael wrote: post #26
pyre wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For free? Probably nothing.

How about alternatives between free and $50/user a year?

I'm thinking nothing if you require things like Google Apps instead of just Gmail. If you're talking about a "Gmail for your Domain" alternative, just look to other email providers:

https://www.fastmail.fm/

http://pobox.com/

http://www.gandi.net (includes some amount of email w/ domain registration)

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#57

Post by loceng »

confluence wrote: post #41

So for hackers it's what? $50 a year for hosting + $10 a year of domain registration for vanity URLs - that's $5 a month. Don't see much of a problem here - I'm surprised they didn't do this sooner - I'm happy to pay for this service at that price - no problem.

I'd imagine this would be ad-free, too..

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#58

Post by [deleted] »

georgemcbay wrote: post #43
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #18

I wonder if the cause of this is the support costs required for the free accounts? Obviously personal GMail is plug-and-play, but for someone who can't spell DNS, setting up a domain account was never quite drop-dead-simple enough. I suspect the goal here is to create a barrier to entry and prevent the inevitable support load of free users. There was an excellent post about this a while ago, where a developer reporte…

I doubt the support costs were very much. As with all things Google other than being an adsense buyer, support was basically "send us an email and we'll respond with a robo-faq that may or may not have anything to do with your question". And Google Apps was actually quite easy to setup, partly because Google documented it pretty well but mostly because many DNS providers would basically do a one-click Google Apps set…

[deleted]

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#59

Post by ams6110 »

redthrowaway wrote: post #25

What really struck me was that they're only offering three nines of uptime. I can't see many businesses ditching Excel or Word to go with something that will cost you half a day of productivity every year, especially not for $50 a license.

What's the "nines" of uptime on a typical corporate desktop? By my back of the envelope calculations it's worse than 3.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#60

Post by natrius »

revelation wrote: post #2

Not sure how to feel about this. The core feature of the free Google Apps was that you could use GMail with your own domain without having to run a dedicated mail server yourself.

Plenty of services will let you forward your mail to a normal GMail account. Without an SMTP server, your GMail account will still be visible to your recipients, but it's not so bad.
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