Oh, the pains of being an early adopter: Google to charge businesses for Google Apps
But it’s not just small companies who have been champing at the bit to make use of Google’s services, as organizations such as Disney, Pixar, and the University of Arizona are eager to sign up to have hundreds of thousands of accounts managed online by Google. The service was offered for free to businesses during Google Apps’ beta period, but will apparently be going live with subscriptions “in the coming weeks,” according to BusinessWeek. It’s still murky as to how much Google will charge organizations for the service, but the fee will reportedly amount to “a few dollars per person per month.”
Now, it is true that all references to pricing refer to business use; there’s no word yet on whether they will charge noncommercial users. And even if they do, a few dollars per month per user isn’t bank-breaking.
But I wonder how well Google will handle the transition. Will some GAFYD customers get cut off if they aren’t paying attention? Will traditional domain hosting get a rush of new customers fleeing? Will Google’s competitors?
I’ve been slowly, slowly warming to this idea of hosted apps. Google Reader took over from Liferea for online news and blogs after I got tired of the latter’s bugs, and Google Calendar works a lot better than the various hack-fests I’ve tried to get local shared calendars working. But I think I’ll stick with hosting my own domain for now, at least until I get a better sense that the providers have the costs figured out.