SketchUp Make, the free desktop version of SketchUp, has reportedly been canned in favour of “SketchUp Free, a free browser-based version” of SketchUp. Users get only “10MB of free storage”, so it looks they’re planning to monetise it via the “add extra storage” angle.
The lack of a free desktop version is going to be rather annoying to:
1) The nearly 40% of rural Americans who still lack access to fast broadband Internet. Many in Canada are also in the Internet boondocks. Australia likewise.
2) Kids whose Internet time is heavily metered and restricted by net-nanny software.
3) Anyone who, for whatever reason, does not have access to the Internet. Prisons, the military, merchant ships etc, all usually with heavily locked-down or no personal Internet access.
4) The rest of the world, re: poor or no viable Internet access in many places in developing nations.
And so on. For the next few days (maybe weeks) you can however still download the free SketchUp Make which is the free desktop version for Windows and Mac. For the benefit of future searchers, sketchupmake-2017-2-2555-90782-en-x64.exe will be the Windows install file you’ll need to search the FTP sites for.