Google Apps Leave Beta 116
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."
Beta (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, duh. Google marks apps as beta so they have no uptime or reliability requirements to the end user. You can't blame businesses for wanting software they've paid for to not have such an inherent disclaimer.
Re:Beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't the paid version non-beta all along?
IIRC only the free versions were marked beta...
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Honestly, having never used the paid versions, I'm not sure. Sorry if that's the case; though since they're based on the same code, I'd then wonder why the free version is marked beta.
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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 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Beta (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Re:Beta (Score:5, Informative)
>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:Beta (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for sharing your opinion, Sergey.
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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 th
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If they aren't already encrypting their mail, using Google isn't really changing anything.
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If they aren't already encrypting their mail, using Google isn't really changing anything.
What company out there does this on a regular basis? And you know, CIA and NSA don't count.
Implementing PGP/GPG organization wide seems almost impossible to me. Can I expect my users to generate keys, make sure they have revocation keys, and submit them to a key server?
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My first comment was a little quick, internal communications are more private if they are on an internal server, but external communications...
Even in the case of internal communications, I bet there are lots of paranoid (especially smaller) companies that don't know that Larry is emailing stuff home to work on, or whatever.
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Also, if they are encrypting their E-Mail, Google isn't really changing anything. It is a case of "you are not damned if you do,but you may well be damned if you don't"
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For most businesses, using https is enough.
Plus the ability to sync everything with your blackberry sorta outweighs alot of other issues.
Now if only they could get thunderbird more user-friendly with a calendar app that was better integrated into the program, then I feel that more people would be switching alot of their stuff instead of paying for Office 2007 and an Exchange server.
Thank god for TechSoup.
Re:Beta - no, it's not reliable (Score:1, Informative)
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.
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I run my own personal mail server ( on a small budget too), and its availability has exceeded google's. I think there's plenty of room for folks to run their own mail servers, if they want better control or privacy...
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This article [blacksun.ca], originally printed in the Regina Leader Post (in Saskatchewan, Canada) bring up the issue of the application of the Patriot Act to email sent by Sask Tel customers if the email was outsourced to a company in the USA.
Whoever moderated my initial comment "flamebait" is wrong. It's a legitimate issue that's of concern to ISPs and their customers outside of the USA.
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The Standard version's ToS had prominent "This is beta software and comes with no guarantees" clauses. The premium version has service guarantees, liability, and no beta clause.
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True enough. Of course, every other software company just hides their liability disclaimers in the EULA. That's ever so much more honest.
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But is it honest to make those damn things As Difficult To Read As Possible? Let's be clear, there's the legal rights claimed and supposed, and then there's the blatent attempt to obscure as much intent as possible by hiding it on hard to navigate to pages, (for example a google telephone number maybe, or at least the process to request some kind of verbal reply, for the press perhaps, I don't know), or the classic microtype, tiny scrolling window, etc., etc. etc.
Ads are also readable, hard to ignore in-fac
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I was being snarky. Burying a liability disclaimer in a EULA is less honest than sticking a Beta label on your product, even if it is legal.
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No, free beta apps that do their jobs well enough are for people like you and me, people that think it's cool to have their agendas online.
Business users use Outlook and/or Exchange. However, these 'casual users' of free beta apps DO provide valuable input - and they probably won't be abandoning their free beta apps as well, since those might not be bug-free yet, but ARE still in development - and, well, f
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wtf (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:wtf (Score:5, Funny)
They have always had a definition.
The problem was that it was just a beta version. They'll be unveiling the 'Release' definition shortly.
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Sounds like people have acclimated to Microsoft retail releases being more like public betas.
If Google made non-business users pay for Apps, would people be more tolerant of "beta testing"?
Re:wtf (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a good question, but if you think about it, it's pretty understandable. If you remember, Gmail used to by an invite-only thing that they were testing. When each of these services were first introduced, they were unstable (both in terms of reliability and the unpredictability of changes) enough to warrant the "beta" tag.
So they probably had a vague and intuitive notion of what "beta" meant to them. However, if you don't have a clear and specific definition of "beta", then there will never be a moment when it clearly makes sense to drop the label.
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They've also changed the way they handle new features. They no longer roll out new features to the interface: they put them in Labs for six months first.
The standard interface really has been out of beta for a while. Labs is the new beta.
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I guess their spin department is still in alpha.
And exactly why might this be a problem for us, the users?
Are you really, truly, honestly proposing that a change from "beta" to "other" should have included unrelated and meaningless changes?
If so: what's wrong with you?
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>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.
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Right, but before you said anything to the judge, you'd have to start with some Sponsored Statements before you could get to saying anything actually on topic, and the order of what you actually did say would be determined by a proprietary weighting algorithm that stood a good chance of putting some squatter information prior to your main point.
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Also, why would I trust a company, that does not even know if its products are still beta, or no, or what it means, or anything?
Has there been a bug tracker site? Was it linked from inside the program? Did no new bug report come in for 3 months? Did they fix all the bugs in the tracker? (Without the feature requests and bugs depending on them.)
I haven't seen any of those. So to me it still is beta, it always will be (Microsoft style), and the only reason it is relabeled, is for money reasons (again Microsof
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Do you mean the Known Issues [google.com] page, which has the know bugs and the applied fixes?
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Of COURSE they have a definition of Beta - Beta is commonly used.
"Alpha" is an in-house test of software. "Beta" is test software released "out of the shop", so Google's "beta" was apt.
I don't think you can have "alpha" or "beta" to noncommercial software. Ubantu can have a beta, but not Linux. Then again, maybe Google was/is taking a poke at Microsoft, who is notorious for releasing buggy yet still expensive software. Microsoft only seems to get it right after a long time; Excel is a good example, a fine s
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Beta (bay'-tuh) n. 1. A tag that doesn't fit for large enterprises: "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." 2. Something that looks cool: "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."
I use Google Apps, but (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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I am curious to know how satisfied or otherwise you are with Google Docs. In my case, I find that this particular application needs more love from Google.
In addition, I would love to have GMail display the calendar in much the same way as YahooMail does. It's sweet to see important dates scroll by at the bottom as you type an email in Yahoo.
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Google Mail and Calendar are great for small businesses. I expect Google Voice to be a game changer as well. Most small businesses have businessname@yahoo.com but Google Mail allows you to have person@businessname.com with the ease of Gmail.
Goggle Apps now.. (Score:1)
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VICTORY (Score:1)
Today is a good day (Score:5, Interesting)
-We finally get a straight answer from Microsoft on C#, in favour of OSS
-Russia and the US agree to disarm
-Microsoft admits there's a security flaw in ActiveX
-VLC reaches 1.0
-Google's stuff gets out of Beta
Either I need to pay more attention, or drop my cynicism. I guess I kind of expected them to happen, just not for a while yet.
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Beta Calendar (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but with my Google Calendar being in Beta status (up until now) I wouldn't have been able to trust it!
Re:Today is a good day (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, and I didn't even have to use my AK!
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Just more things to add to the list of things that have happened since Duke Nukem Forever was announced.
(Yes, I know it's dead...)
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Yeah, really it's been weird all year. The first black president, record labels drop DRM, Duke Nukem Forever is finally cancelled, The Watchmen is released as a movie, HTML5 and CSS3 are starting to be implemented in almost all the major browsers, and...
...what else? I bet we could keep it going. That stuff was just off the top of my head.
Re:Today is a good day (Score:5, Funny)
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I can see where it's going:
- CAFC declares all software-only patents invalid
- Microsoft releases ODF compatibility pack for all versions of Office as a critical update
- SCO is officially dissolved
- Apple declares it will implement Theora in HTML5
- Adobe open sources Flash Player
- Kim Jong-il's residence blown up in a North Korean nuclear test mishap
- Michael Jackson jumps out of the coffin and performs "Thriller" at his funeral to a shocked audience
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and better yet...
- Slashdot readers DO profit!!!!
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Wait for tomorrow! It will be like when Al Bundy got four aces, because the horror with the scope said "Good luck's a-comin'"!
No MJ? (Score:2)
Nothing for Michael Jackson?
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Axl Rose finally got Chinese Democracy out the door last year.
So, what do we get in 2010?
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The year of the Linux desktop!
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Forget DNF, where the hell's my flying car?
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These jokers are working on a street legal airplane (They have completed flight testing a proof of concept):
http://www.terrafugia.com/ [terrafugia.com]
holy shit! (Score:4, Funny)
I haven't been this surprised since Amazon turned a profit.
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ObUserFriendly [userfriendly.org]
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Fixed that for you.
Nooooo! (Score:5, Funny)
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GNU/Hurd 1.0 released [humorix.org]
"BETA" Already gone (Score:2)
I just hit Shift-Refresh and the "BETA" suffix is no longer there on Gmail.
Two definitions of "stable" (Score:4, Insightful)
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A "stable" medical device is far more stable than a "stable" website. It is a matter of reaching the metrics stated in the system availability requirements.
Docs and Android (Score:3, Interesting)
Glad to see they're out of beta. So, when can I create, edit, view and share documents on Google Docs from my Google G1 Android phone? So far, you can edit and view spreadsheets (to a limited extent) but you can't create them, nor use any of the other doc types.
Google translation tool (Score:1)
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Is a bird! Is a plane! (Score:2)
By the time you finally accepted the fact that the full name of the product wasnt "Gmail", but "Gmail Beta", they changed the rules, say that all was a joke, and that the real name was all the time Gmail, that was in beta stage.
100 million (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you disappointed by this announcement (Score:5, Funny)
They've give you the option to put your own version of Gmail back into beta, you know, if you're into that sort of thing:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gmail-leaves-beta-launches-back-to-beta.html [blogspot.com]
The good news: Google apps are all out of beta! (Score:5, Funny)
The bad news: they're all entering 'Gamma'
I got my google voice invite yesterday (Score:1)
Simple Marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Calling Google Apps "Beta" was likely a pragmatic move on the front of both marketing to bleeding edge internet enthusiasts who are addicted to novelty and engineering in limiting the expectations and liability of google products. They could maintain beta quality products and code and levels of support as long as they kept the beta moniker.
However, I feel that the web's incestuous advertising scheme is beginning to dry up in these times of economic peril, so google needs to go for harder sources of money, like enterprises. Now they're no longer circumventing Microsoft in the market but facing them head to head for a position in the enterprise. Microsoft has as strong position in this market, so they have a certain legacy and stability, which enterprises appreciate.
The first step for Google in combating this will be the simple rebranding of their products to give the semblance of maturity. In reality, any recent changes to the code are minimal to superficial, so this is merely a marketing maneuver and says nothing about the practical roles of beta and gold software in software engineering. It's a welcome change, but it is yet to be seen whether google has the attention span to maintain stable enterprise products. Offering a consistent platform will also open them up to the sort of demonization that Microsoft has faced up until now, as expectations may rise above what they can deliver.
In short, Google is growing up.
It does not mean what you think it means (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what beta means, you idiot! It means it's in the trial phase! You mean I've been right all along, and the beta tag was just an excuse to eliminate complaints? Well color me shocked. The attitude has got a whiff of evil about it.
Some say that the freebie version will end, too (Score:3, Interesting)
Julie
--
Take a gander at Network World's Google Subnet [networkworld.com]
Google news for the enterprise.
Re:Some say that the freebie version will end, too (Score:4, Informative)
This is not true. From the Google official blog [blogspot.com]:
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It's still there, it's just moved on the page. Under the big "Try the 30 Day Trial" button is the "Or explore Google Apps Standard", which does have a sign up page.
http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new [google.com]
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I know it's not ending, but I would be fine with them ending it so long as they created a price tier between $0 and $50 per user per year. Even if they didn't drop the free version, I'd be willing to pay for a few extra features. If I could pay $50 per year for specific users, I'd probably go for it for my own account and those of my immediate family. But I've got about 30 friends who I've given email accounts to and there's no way I'm paying $1500/year.
I think there's a real opportunity for them to make a
Remnants Of A Power Struggle (Score:3, Interesting)
that aren't keen to run their business on software that sounds like it's still in the trial phase.
This is the precise moment the last developer with a say in business, died at google. May they rest in peace.
The beta label issue has been around about as long as gmail itself, and every time they were asked about it, the answer was always the same: it's trial software. Because, IT WAS, and STILL IS.
Now we have google announcing on their own their graduation from beta, but for all the wrong reasons. The marketing heads had to make it known that they won. They should have just said, "it is now stable software." But no, that is what a responsible developer would say. They basically denounced the beta label being there in the first place, giving strategic reasons, and not technical ones. The worst part? If they had known better, they would have still pretended to be responsible developers.
They are idiots, and they are taking over. If I had google stock, I would sell it right about... NOW.
Distinguishing from Bing (Score:1)
Maybe they want to start distinguishing their services from Microsoft's Bing? "Our products are stable, not like that Bing thing; it's still in beta"
Beta or not... (Score:2)
Serious professionals do not use "@gmail.com" email addresses.
Re:Beta or not... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Not beta my arse... (Score:1)
1) The inability to select text in the chat window that is further down (or up) the window (if you need to scroll, you're screwed because the damned selection disappears)
2) The irritating bug where if someone happens to send you a message while you're editing your own message, the cursor inexplicably jumps to the end of your message, causing profanities to profusely issue from one's mouth.
3) Like 2) above except, as an added bonus