The did offer Google Apps for Business for free for years to anybody who called themselves a business.
You can still use almost all of their services for your business (Drive, Apps, Gmail) for free. They'll even give you a free phone number and voicemail box.
Sure - and I've used many of those facilities (still am, in fact), and I appreciate them.
My intended point was really their miscommunication here - they exclude well over 99% of the organisations that consider themselves start-ups, and so the headline sets many up for disappointment. A better choice of wording would have sent a very different message.
You can still use almost all of their services for your business (Drive, Apps, Gmail) for free. They'll even give you a free phone number and voicemail box.
I'd call all of that more than a small freebie.