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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

#251

Post by ladzoppelin »

Karunamon wrote: post #200
pfisch wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree with this. If they are going to dick us over I can understand that because they were offering us something free that costs money to run, but just be straight with us. I don't think the google apps business customers are this dumb. They aren't going to trick us with this kind of obvious double talk. We are just going to think they are being deceptive and be less understanding.

"Dicking us over" Really ? * really ? * Choosing to stop offering a free service while allowing people who already have it to keep it is dicking you over?

Free? That's being being pretty disingenuous considering Google is an Advertising/Tracking company with the number one search engine in the world. No one uses any Google service or app for free so technically it was not a "free service". They should be upfront with people in the beginning if they don't want people bitching.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#252

Post by Dylan16807 »

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #124
indiecore wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and if I was setting up a company of 100 people I'd be fine with that because I probably have the cash flow to support that. I was in the middle of setting up a service for a company of one at the moment and having one or two redirected emails isn't worth fifty dollars a year each right now.

So, a real life story: I set up a free GMail account for my site, and directed all the contacts from the site there. I added it to my phone so I'd know when I got messages. I didn't really do much promotion, so I wasn't surprised I didn't see anything for a week. When I logged in from the web, I had gotten three emails from potential customers. Unfortunately, they'd been sitting for a week, and so it didn't make a ve…

I don't understand what point you're trying to get across here. Aren't you just as likely to forget to check a google apps mail as a regular gmail? Or are you describing a bug? Isn't that still equally likely with either option?

Aren't both options crushed in effectiveness by redirecting to your main account, whatever that is?

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#253

Post by gregd »

gtt wrote: post #72

On a related note could dear hn crowd suggest email provider (maybe paid, say up to 30-40$ annually) caring about my privacy a little bit more? Really delete my messages when I want to is a good start. Google is all good but I feel I should not put all of my emails in one account..

http://www.cotse.net/

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#257

Post by k3n »

mdasen wrote: post #189
yanw wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging from this and previous threads people here are either distrusting of free services or aren't willing to pay for the goods (not everyone obviously) which is quite the paradox. I'll chalk this one down to the startup nature of this community, seeing as some are probably involved with competing products or are developing some, but the matter of fact is that this announcement is perfectly reasonable: “vanilla” gm…

You're correct to point out that there's no swindling or bait-and-switch happening here. I get to keep my Google Apps account for free. Google did the right thing. I think what we're reacting to is that the free tier of Google Apps doesn't seem any different (from a cost perspective) from regular Gmail. They're giving me the same storage, showing me the same ads, providing the same no phone support, etc. The real dif…

I think it's easily worth $50 a year even for a single user with a personal domain, but then again, I'm kind of particular with my email. Whenever I need to use an email address, I use sitename.com@mydomain.com. Since only my family and friends use my real email address, everything else is easier to filter/label, and if some site gives my address out it's easy to track down who it was.

To do this without having to manually create each address before I used it, I had to enable a catch-all address for my domain. Originally, I had my hosting provider (who are great) as the MX and they would simply forward it all on to Gmail. Well, sooner or later they determined that the massive amount of was killing their server, and politely asked if I could either disable the catch-all or find another MX (though they weren't firing me as a customer, yet). Even though my host has always been reasonable, $100ish/yr with them wasn't enough for me to use email the way that I intended.

This is where Google Apps comes in -- they are now my MX, and so my host is happy and my email arrives faster than it did before. In that light, $50/yr is a steal!

Being grandfathered in as free is a nice loyalty-builder, hopefully it stays free.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#258

Post by dave_sullivan »

Well... fair enough.

If you use google apps already, nothing changes (if I'm reading this correctly?)

If you're thinking about using google apps, you've got to pay for it now.

Yes, this benefits no one but google. Then again, google has been providing benefit to millions of people with google apps. Running your own e-mail server is not trivial. There's a reason there are no good gmail alternatives--it's harder than it looks.

If I were them, I would have charged for it from the beginning--it's a really useful service. And they could have been real dicks by forcing all current free users to start coughing up dough.

Re: Google Apps stops accepting free sign-ups

#259

Post by brc »

zmmmmm wrote: post #75
jxi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand you're upset, but that's probably a really naive view. Maybe it seems to you that there is no DIRECT upside for you personally, but there's always an upside, just like there's always a downside for every good thing that happens. This looks to me just synonymous to killing a high maintenance, low returns project so that they can focus better on either the business version or other stuff. The "indirect" up…

To be clear, I'm not so upset about them killing the free version (although I do think it's sad - all the startups I've been in got our google apps accounts before we even had a bank account - because it was free! I wonder what will happen in the future). I mainly dislike the style of communication here. It really wouldn't be so terrible for Google to say: While it was very popular we found it was quite costly and we…

The same thing applied to the removal of the search term with the https connections. 'We're doing it for the privacy of our users'. The same users who will have the keyword information handed over, gladly, if you just pay Google.

The wording was awful, and this and that go to show how long the 'don't be evil' mantra is dead.

I'm all for Google yanking their free Apps account. It's their product, and people can't rightly bitch about something free being removed from the market.

However, it's using politician-grade spin to try and convince smart people that 1=2 which is the insulting bit.

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