However, there is one VERY important difference: data ownership and privacy. Google Apps for Work (and edu) accounts, which I use for various organizations as well as even for my own personal, single-user domain, have much better data ownership and privacy terms:
See: https://support.google.com/work/answer/6056650?hl=en
Does Google use my organization’s data in Google Apps
services or Cloud Platform for advertising purposes?
No. There are no ads in Google Apps Services or Google Cloud
Platform, and we have no plans to change this in the future.
We do not scan for advertising purposes in Gmail or other
Google Apps services. Google does not collect or use data in
Google Apps services for advertising purposes.
The process is different for our free offerings and the
consumer space. For information on our free consumer
products, be sure to check Google's Privacy and Terms page
for more consumer tools and information relating to consumer
privacy.Just like the parent, I once owned a Google Apps account and moved off it because of the lock-in effect. Now I have a personal account and no longer use Gmail at all. So I don't care about Gmail's privacy terms, because it no longer applies to me.
Still, if I had the choice I'd opt in to the standard privacy policy in an instant. I understand some people's concerns about Google information gathering but it's not a concern of mine. I just want things to work.
Features that aren't relevant to the intended target market may be useful to people making atypical uses, but it's quite likely not commercially sensible to bother with them, and building a robust separate G Suite for Personal Domains offering that takes the right mix of features of the existing consumer and organizational offerings may itself not serve enough of a market to be worth the effort.
For my personal use, I have a custom domain on Outlook.com and this account is also a generic Google Account so I have access to the best of Microsoft and Google in one account. Might be a good approach but the only thing I wish is that Outlook had some of Google Inbox's capabilities.
Since I don't use Google for email, my Android phone can't automatically sniff for stuff like parcels or movie tickets and show me Now cards in my device. Other than that, I have a full-fledged Google account tied to my Outlook.com email. That's been my setup for a while.