What are the chances that Google starts charging $2/month (maybe lower in certain markets) for Gmail? I imagine there would be plenty of takers. Maybe not 2 billion takers, but quite a few.
They did that with grandafathered Google Apps accounts (custom domain) which remained free until last year. I bet the vast majority of them (like me) switched to the paid version
> I bet the vast majority of them (like me) switched to the paid version
I don't think that's true. Everyone I know who used custom domains with Gmail migrated away. No one paid, Google priced it just high enough that people could justify spending the time migrating.
There might have been a solution where you could keep the custom domain, if you used it for email only, but the messaging was really confusing, and many had already migrated away at that point. There may also have been issues if you hosted email for others. In my case I had my own email and that of a few family members, it wasn't clear that I could keep all the email account, or just my own. In the end I think many didn't want to deal with Google after this and just moved their domains.
There was enough of an outcry that they were forced to implement a way to keep it free if all you used was email (and checked the “noncommercial” box).
There used to be large banners and numerous emails warning about this. The deadline has passed now but you can get the “non commercial” flag enabled by going to the help center and asking for it in the chat bot.
