I don't know why this becomes an issue with every single service Google launches. It's pretty clear Google's strategy is not to launch Apps support for any product that is either beta or immediately post-beta, and it wants to wait a bit until things get stable enough to use for enterprise.
It's frustrating because Google Apps has been the solution for bring-your-own-domain email, and many people use it as such. If I could use my own domain on a consumer Gmail account, I would.
Google acts like it's just for enterprise customers, but that's not how a whole lot of people use it.
That's actually a much more logical explanation than I've heard before, but it seems to be based on a potential misunderstanding of who is using the service -- maybe it is mostly giant companies, but I bet there are a lot of tinkerers who just like having the custom email domain.
On that thread, for us early adopters who got permanently free Google domains for up to 50 users before Google Apps for Work was ever a thing, declined to upgrade, and kept the free service...
I have no point really, other than to be the one saying Thanks Google in a gripe thread. I have been bitten by this before, but now that the sting has eased I don't miss Google Apps on my personal vanity domain account even a little bit. I have a real gmail /g+ account that I can use to sign up for betas and giveaways like this, for mailing lists I'd rather keep separate from more personal comms, and for any other pseudonymous communication, etc. that saves me from a lot of hassle, and my employer is a paid subscriber to Apps for Work, so I even am really aware of all what I'm missing.
tl;dr: thanks for the free e-mail service, Google! You're a real bro
