Rajesh Rana [dot] netMy Web DiscoveriesSkip to contentAbout MeContact MeLinksUltraSurfSearchTorrentGoogle Apps Team is Shutting Down – Why I Should Not Worry?12-Aug-12Google Says –“We introduced Google Apps for Teams in 2008 to allow people with a verified business or school email address to collaborate using non-email applications from Google like Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Talk. Over time, we realized that Google Apps for Teams was not as useful for people as we originally anticipated. Beginning September 4, 2012, we’ll start converting existing Google Apps for Teams accounts into personal Google Accounts, and shutting down Google Apps for Teams. This change does not affect other editions of Google Apps.”Now days under the Larry’s leadership, Google is in razor sharp FOCUS and SHUT DOWN MODE, shutting down all the unnecessary or less used things over the time. Shutting down Google Apps Team is part of it.Small companies like us heavily rely on Google Apps for daily Emails and Google Docs for collaboration. So is it the end of era of free emails and docs for small businesses?Wait, Do not panic, it is not.Our major concern with Google Apps is Free Emails for small businesses? will it be affected?Google Apps Free Email is something which is most widely used and they can not afford to shut it down, they are only shutting down the Google Apps Team – Gtalk, Calender,  Docs. But it doesn’t mean that these will just vanish into thin air but they are converting Google Apps Team into Google personal account which we did that around 2 years ago for Google.com/a/techshu.com [Link 1, Link 2] when they 1st introduced this option, now days our team members do not see google.com/a/techshu.com anywhere which means we are using Google Personal Account services. and guess what we didn’t loose our email address which is ema...@techshu.com and we are still using Google docs.Why they are shutting down Google Apps Team, I have following thoughts -Good for Google Biz – They want to make it exclusive only for Google Apps Business and Enterprise (Now Business with Vault) package.Good for us – With Google Personal account we can have access to all Google services not just limited to few services.Good for Google – By Converting Google Apps Team into Google Personal Account, they want to keep us under umbrella of new Google Privacy Terms and Conditions for Google personal accounts which is applicable to any Google services you use you can’t run away from them. Do we need to worry?I guess not. Our worry point is only free emails and I feel that they never going to shut it down in next 5 years coz free 10 emails are their business preposition (touch wood, you never know about Google, as they can afford to close it down we can’t even protest it).To clarify your doubts further you may refer to – http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2669622 More – H