Gmail is out of beta

One more thing for those who still like the look of "beta", we've made it easy to re-enable the beta label for Gmail from the Labs tab under Settings.

This is silly and undermines the whole concept of a "beta" version. It makes it look like a fashion accessory more than anything, not an actual indication of product stability and completion.

mtomczak• 17 years ago

I strongly suspect that's the point. What does "beta" mean on a web service that is continually updated by the developers in essentially realtime? The only real meaning I can think it has is the liability concerns that others in this thread have mentioned.

halo• 17 years ago

It's a self-deprecating joke.

Hexstream• 17 years ago

By the way, if anyone's wondering, I verified that this Labs feature actually exists!

ken3• 17 years ago

"We're often asked why so many Google applications seem to be perpetually in beta."

It was a great lead-in, but he never did answer this.

dschobel• 17 years ago

I thought the common wisdom was that it's a matter of liability as in "hey, sorry we lost all of your emails but it was clearly indicated as a beta product; maybe next time you'll pay for the commercial version which has SLAs"

mbrubeck• 17 years ago

Except they already had a paid commercial version with SLAs, while the product was still labeled "beta."

jemka• 17 years ago

I think he alludes to it with, "So we've focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark."

Achieving the goals of the "high bar" seem to be the key to getting out of beta. But five years? That's a really high bar.

ken3• 17 years ago

He does hint at it, but avoids saying anything concrete.

I had no idea GMail was even one of the "Google apps" (I thought that name meant their spreadsheet / word processor, but I guess that's "Google docs"). These were all completely different products, doing different things, sometimes developed outside by a company Google later bought, and developed years apart, so it's not clear to me why this particular set of products needs to be un-"beta"'d all at once.

It also doesn't speak to the more general question. I don't think their "beta" apps are inferior, in general, to their non-"beta" apps, so their "high bar" must be pretty crooked. :-)

vermontdevil• 17 years ago

Breaking news?

rjurney6• 17 years ago

This seems totally reckless to me. Google is out of control!

rjurney6• 17 years ago

You guys have no sense of humor.

rjurney6• 17 years ago

Alright. Feed me the bad karma. I still think its funny.

Here's the joke, in case you didn't get it: "Releasing from beta after many years could not possibly be reckless, therefore saying that it is in an alarming manner is a HA HA funny time joke."

thras3• 17 years ago

Out of beta? More importantly, who do I call if I have a problem with my Gmail account?

Retric2• 17 years ago

The person / company you paid to use Gmail.

thras3• 17 years ago

Sure. Tell me how I can pay to use Gmail?

Ennis2• 17 years ago

This feels like it has to do more with the changing culture at Google. A beta label would not have lasted this long at a company like Microsoft because the business team would not even consider it. They would have thought about the implications of companies hesitating to use beta software. I really liked google's gung ho techhead culture personally. I hope they find the right balance and not push their engineers into too much rigidity.

tjmc• 17 years ago

That's not quite true. Microsoft had a Hotmail plugin in Outlook Express that was "beta" for at least 5 years. Microsoft simply used the term as an excuse to avoid supporting a product that people don't pay for. Sounds pretty similar to me.

Ennis2• 17 years ago

From what I've seen on the inside of the company I would disagree. It's more likely that feature was so low priority that it never made the bar to be looked at seriously. I'm not bad mouthing the company. On the contrary they have some of the best minds in the world there. It's just the way company culture is at Microsoft. Much more than code goes into making their software which to say the least complicates things. I can elaborate but I guess I'll leave it at that.

Mintz• 17 years ago

This is more than just an updated .gif, this is Google committing itself to its product. Good to see.

ryne• 17 years ago

I think it's nothing more than an updated gif. Google Notebook was out of beta for a few years before they pulled the plug. Albeit the circumstances were different but Google has the power to uproot any of their products as they see fit without any real "commitment."

sachinag• 17 years ago

The right answer to "why" is "because they couldn't get corporations and organizations to pay for Google Apps with a beta tag attached to any of the core offerings of the suite offering".

onreact-com• 17 years ago

This does not mean you can rely on Gmail now. Remember the recent downtimes. I use Gmail only as a secondary tool, relying on my own domain for business email and using another free email service.

smakz• 17 years ago

This is the whole point of beta programs. They talk about you once when you release and again when you're out of beta: free PR.

andrewljohnson• 17 years ago

What a lousy blog post. It doesn't even come close to telling us what Google's "out of beta" standard is. Just a PR stunt, and a badly executed one at that.

derefr2• 17 years ago

For google, "beta" is purely a PR label; this is because what "beta" normally is is an HR distinction, and Google doesn't work that way.

In more standard companies, the R&D team writes software up to, and including, the beta. Once the software is "released," the maintenance team steps in and the R&D team moves on. Google doesn't do this, so there's no meaning to a Google product being "in beta" or "out of beta."

Gmail is out of beta

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