Google quietly killed its free version of Google Apps for Business with a blog post, saying that only the premium version would be available from now on, for $50 per user per year, VentureBeat reports.
Google Apps “Standard” used to be available for businesses with under 50 users, providing email, calendaring, shared documents, spam and virus filtering, and up to seven gigabytes of space per user. The former premium version is now the new standard, coming with 25 gigabytes per user, 24/7 phone support, and a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee.
Google says this change will have “no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version,” which suggests that existing companies using Google Apps for free will be grandfathered in.
This is unexpected but not shocking news: businesses are used to paying for services, and nobody will cry for corporations that now need to pay for Google apps alongside their Basecamp account, VB says.
