Google Apps Leave Beta

Today Google announced that they're removing the "beta" label from Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk. They said, "We've come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn't fit for large enterprises that aren't keen to run their business on software that sounds like it's still in the trial phase." Quoting the NYTimes: "'Obviously we haven't had a consistent set of policies or definitions around beta,' said Matt Glotzbach, a director of product management at Google. Mr. Glotzbach said that different teams at Google had different criteria for what beta meant, and that Google felt a need to standardize those. ... Practically speaking, the change will mean precious little to Gmail's millions of users. But it could help Google's efforts to get the paid version of its package of applications, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Docs and other products, adopted inside big companies."

I use Google Apps, but

[C_Kode]

We use Google Apps for business purposes, but selectively. It just doesn't work for all my documents. By the term "all", I mean most. We basically use it to keep track of certain project details among other things, but not for any of our real documents.

100 million

[necro81]

Gmail has 100 million users and has been around over five years [wikipedia.org]. Apps has 1.75 million. So, yes, about damn time.

Re:Beta

[bemymonkey]

I think it had something to do with new features only being integrated into the paid version when they'd been thoroughly tested in the free version - or something along those lines.

Maybe I'm just imagining it, but I think I remember reading something about that a while ago. :)

Re:Beta

[eldaria]

I have used the premium Google apps for a little over a year, and only today the logo had the beta label removed, I were actually reading about it on Engadget, flipped to the tab with my mail and saw that it had beta on the logo, refreshed the page and the beta label was gone.

Re:Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

>Wasn't the paid version non-beta all along?

Yeah, and it's reliable. There's really no reason for small and medium businesses to run their own mail servers anymore.

Re:wtf

[fishbowl]

>If they don't have a definition for "beta" then why was it there in the first place?

They don't need a definition. If you were going to sue Google, they'd be able to say "Not only did it have no warranty, but it was also marked 'beta' which is common vernacular in the software industry for 'in testing' or 'if it breaks you get both pieces.'"

It would not be hard to get an expert witness to say that to a judge. I would.

Re:Beta - no, it's not reliable

[Anonymous Coward]

your account can get shutdown any minute, randomly, and good luck on trying to retrieve it:
http://corfield.org/blog/index.cfm/do/blog.entry/entry/Gmail_Account_Disabled
read all the replies, not as lucky as a high profile blogger i guess.

Re:Some say that the freebie version will end, too

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not true. From the Google official blog [blogspot.com]:

We've heard some questions about why the link to Google Apps Standard Edition disappeared from the Enterprise Apps home page, so we wanted to share the answer. As we explored a few design changes to the page, the link to Standard Edition was inadvertently dropped, although the free version of Apps was, as always, available here. We've put the link back where it belongs so that it's easy to find.

We have no intention of eliminating Standard Edition, and we apologize for any confusion.

Re:Beta

[hesiod]

I congratulate you for the immense work you must have put in to achieve such an astounding level of ignorance. Of course businesses have privacy concerns! That's why big corps will pay a shitload of money to really good IT people to keep their systems secure, instead of relying on the honesty unknown people at some other company over which they have no (or little, at least) control. The best way for them to mitigate the risk of liability would be to keep all that data off the freaking Internet, and on their own systems.

Re:Beta

[Zarel]

Did you check "Enable pre-release features" or "Next generation" in the Google Apps domain settings? It's my impression that only explicitly enabling beta features like that would cause the "beta" label to appear. If those are unchecked, you should see no "beta" label.

Re:Beta or not...

[Tacvek]

Yes, but Google Apps uses your own domain name. Hence the reason why it was originally named "Google Apps for Your Domain". The name has since been shortened, but that fact still remains.

Re:wtf

[icebraining]

Do you mean the Known Issues [google.com] page, which has the know bugs and the applied fixes?