Pretty much everyone I know who is using the free Google Apps is using it just for webmail and according to this outlook.com allows you to have 500 users per domain instead of free Google App's 10 users.
While I'm still grandfathered in to the old Google Apps free tier on a couple of domains, I'm going to try switching one of them over to outlook.com and see how it goes.
I never would have bothered paying attention to this if Google hadn't killed their free tier, hopefully whatever gain they get from that was worth the potential loss of users (even though they offer it for free, they still benefit from my data and showing me ads in mail, now it is likely they won't).
As kayoone said, I already acknowledged that in the post you're responding to.
While I think it is at least somewhat nice that Google did grandfather in existing users, a big part of the appeal for free Google Apps for me is that whenever I had a domain that needed mail but not too much and not worth paying for (because the domain was not a profit maker) I could spin up a free Google Apps easily and know was I was getting because I was used to it. Also I could recommend doing the same to friends in the same situation.
Without that ability in the future, I feel it is in my best interest to start migrating off the platform even on my existing domains, especially when this alternate option (which I was previously unaware of) is available.
I don't pretend to know what Google's cost and benefits were with regard to free Google Apps, or whether this move makes sense in the large, but I can tell you that in my specific case they've begun pushing me away from their email infrastructure altogether with it.
While I'm still grandfathered in to the old Google Apps free tier on a couple of domains, I'm going to try switching one of them over to outlook.com and see how it goes.
I never would have bothered paying attention to this if Google hadn't killed their free tier, hopefully whatever gain they get from that was worth the potential loss of users (even though they offer it for free, they still benefit from my data and showing me ads in mail, now it is likely they won't).