Google Apps for small businesses no longer free

It would appear that as of 7 December, Google has decided to pull their free service for Apps. Members who are already signed up to the free service can continue to use it free of charge, but new accounts will be billed using the non-free support driven service. This will be a big blow to small businesses as it was a great gateway into the Google Apps ecosystem and worked very well for personal domain owners that wanted to handle their email and mx records via google.