I don’t know about you, but I’m a big user of free online applications — everything from Netvibes, to GMail, to FeedBurner to Twitter.  You could say that I run a significant chunk of my business on free apps.

So it was with a twinge of horror that I read this piece by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal about having his GMail account disabled today with no advance warning:

Google, I am a very lucky American who is living the dream of owning or being a partner in several small businesses. Each of these businesses utilize Google’s GMail and Google Docs, in an effort to cut down on infrastructure costs and keep an open stream of communication between all employees, contractors and clients.

Since Google has decided to take my account away from me, the nucleus of our company communications has been taken away and now is replaced by a black hole. My small business communications are now ruined until my account is reestablished.

An even bigger problem is that Google now combines all the Google services you use under a single account. That means that more than his email is affected. Loren is not able to use his Google Analytics account nor his Google AdSense account, either, while the account is disabled.

With any luck it will turn out to be a temporary glitch and everything will return to normal soon. But it does point out one issue that more and more small businesses will face, as they rely heavily on free cloud-computing apps. That is, one day those apps could be gone, along with all the accumulated data and the functionality you used them for.

Some of the comments to Loren’s post were quite interesting, including this one by Nick Wilsdon which provides in part:

The problem with a cloud computing setup is that you have to rely in third party apps that are out of your control.

The lesson here … not a smart move if you are relying on free apps. There is little consideration towards free account holders - support is terrible to non-existent across a range of well known Web 2.0. apps.

Others have pointed out that you can sign up for the corporate version, Google Apps, for $50 per year. Relying on it for business presumably would be a better solution because as a paying customer you could get customer support.

That could at least help you with your email. But for most of us who are active online, GMail is just the tip of the iceberg. I use a couple of dozen free apps in my business, and I know many other small businesses in the same boat. Those online applications have been integrated into our procedures for running our businesses and sometimes are tied directly to our financial success. Losing any of those apps and the data in them would bring varying degrees of angst.  That shows the downside of relying upon free apps.

Of course, the countervailing consideration is the way so many of us run our businesses. We have a need for personal mobility, for apps we can access from a laptop while on the go. We have a need to give access to these apps to a distributed work force and remote contractors. These online apps fit the bill for the way we work. And sometimes the free services are the best in class.

Still, this calls attention to the free versus paid debate.