Has Google Redefined Beta? 292
netbuzz writes "Someone finally took the time to do a count of all the Google apps marked 'beta.' And with fully 45% of its products carrying that familiar tag — including 4-year-old Gmail — Google says there's an explanation: Beta doesn't mean to them what it has long meant to the rest of the tech community. 'We believe beta has a different meaning when applied to applications on the Web,' says a company spokesman."
I think its fair enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Change? No. Excuse? Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
Christ, game companies have been using 'beta' as a dodge for shitty demos since Shiny squeezed Messiah out. The fact that the same 'it's just a beta, it'll get better!' promises and pleas have trickled upward and outward is clear indication that gravity itself is in beta, because shit certainly doesn't just flow downhill any more.
Beta = Everything old is NEW again! (Score:4, Interesting)
My theory is that by always having 'beta' next to something, this ensures that anyone who uses their tools will always think they are using the latest and greatest.
Or, maybe they want to remind people of a fish, [associatedcontent.com] that swims alone from the crowd with a brilliant display of features.
Experimental Use exception perhaps? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm no attorney, but perhaps Google figures that if they treat these products as "experimental" in some way they will have a chance at mitigating the one year timer on obtaining a patent after public use?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_use [wikipedia.org]
Re:That's just plain stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, what I quite don't understand is why they would want to call it beta, I mean, it's not like it's got a good cling to it.
No it's not. I really don't know why they continue to use "beta" when a product is clearly mature.
My honest guess? It's a compromise between the marketing people and the developers. Developers want to add new things continuously and not go through these product development stages where they do endless testing to see if people like a new feature. Marketing people get all nervous about new features "ruining their brand". The developers are still in charge at Google (being a young company), so the compromise is just to call everything "beta" (A pretty stupid compromise IMO).
You're entirely right about the "pay for premium" though. Google needs to drop the stupid beta word, and pick something that's more representative of what the product is. I'd choose something more like a "lifestage" kind of label. Toddler, teenage, adult, mature, senior, elderly would be good starts.
Traditional definition (Score:2, Interesting)
Many people today are confused about what beta means, due to Microsoft releasing public betas, MMOs going through open betas, etc. Here's what I was taught way back when:
Alpha testing was structured testing. It was often white-box testing of very specific features and systems done by internal testers. In usability tests, it meant that you pretty much told the users what to do and observed whether they had problems with it.
Beta testing was unstructured testing. It was often black-box testing of the entire program, done by people not very familiar with it. Basically, you get a bunch of monkeys to bang on your code. In usability tests, it meant that you got people in off the street and had them play with the program to do whatever.
I say "was" because these days most companies treat alpha and beta as just progress towards a release without a clear meaning for either.
Re:MS redefined beta a long time ago (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure he's saying that Microsoft started releasing products when they should still be in beta (as in ones that still need a lot of work).
I'm not sure how someone could be mistaken for being an "Apple fanboi" by saying Apple did *that* first. Or how Vista was an exception to that.
Microsoft redefined "release" to be what "beta" used to be: Microsoft's release products are so buggy and untested that we now have a lower standard for what is in "beta". If you want a good definition of "beta" software, take a look at Google's GMail, or perhaps ANY Blizzard game.
Re:That's just plain stupid (Score:2, Interesting)
What was "Beta" original meaning ? (Score:2, Interesting)
But, what was the original meaning of "beta" to begin with ?
Several sources (Wikipedia, Jargon Files, etc...) will all point to the fact that "beta" software is software that has passed initial testing, and is released to some users (outside the company) before the official product launch, in order to gather feedback, perform tests, find malfunctions and see if everything is working as it should and if nothing needs fixing.
It only means that some malfunctions may still be hidden somewhere. But otherwise it should be usable.
Most of Google's softwares are exactly in this state : Google has bothered to officially announce them as final, but nonetheless they are functional (although some minor tweaking might still appear here and there to improve them or introduce micro features that are needed).
That's also why 99.999% of open source software has also version numbers like "0.9.54 beta" : it should works, but the author doesn't he can freely pretend that the software will run in every known configuration possible.
And that is the canonical meaning of the word.
The fact that most users today consider that it means "warning, may spontaneously implode and ruin you, blow your house up and kick your dog in the process", has nothing to do with the word's original meaning. This is only due to the huge a mount of companies which have very poor coding practices producing horribly crash prone stuff, and make available to the public monstruosities that never should have left the company and that still need massive amount of ironing.
in short :
- "beta" doesn't assert the quality of the code.
- "beta" asserts a step in the production cycle (let a bigger user base test it)
It's the bad quality of some product released in "beta" which has lead people to associate the word with bad quality software.