Potentially a deal-breaker for us. We had a LOT of issues accessing various Google services after switching from Google Apps to Office 365, which is cheaper and includes the office suite which the rest of the world use.
That's not exactly right. You need a Google account, but it does not need to have gmail attached to it. Yes, lots of people don't know such a thing exists...but it's easy to set up.
On the "standard" Google account creation page is a link that says something like "I prefer to use my current email address."
As long as you have an email address that Google can validate, it's fine to use that instead of a gmail address.