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.
Gmail is out of beta
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may be funny, but it doesn't add much of anything to the conversation. It's a rare joke that gets upmodded around here, but if it happens, it happens because it's also insightful and reveals something novel. There's nothing "novel" about "Google takes a long time to take things out of beta", which is why it's neither a good joke nor a good HN comment. In contrast, Paul Graham says a lot of funny things without eve…
As to jokes: I disagree fundamentally. This is a silly little article anyway. I come out about even on jokes karma wise. You know whats worse than a bad joke though? PG ass kissing ;) Anyway, of course I knew I'd get more bad karma. I tend to enjoy it once in a while.
[deleted]
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
As to jokes: I disagree fundamentally. This is a silly little article anyway. I come out about even on jokes karma wise. You know whats worse than a bad joke though? PG ass kissing ;) Anyway, of course I knew I'd get more bad karma. I tend to enjoy it once in a while.
[deleted]
I poop on you.
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#34Re: Gmail is out of beta
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The person / company you paid to use Gmail.
Sure. Tell me how I can pay to use Gmail?
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html
$50 per user per year after trial
* The 99.9% uptime SLA for Google Apps is offered to organisations using Google Apps Premier Edition, as described in the Google Apps Premier Edition Terms of Service.
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may be funny, but it doesn't add much of anything to the conversation. It's a rare joke that gets upmodded around here, but if it happens, it happens because it's also insightful and reveals something novel. There's nothing "novel" about "Google takes a long time to take things out of beta", which is why it's neither a good joke nor a good HN comment. In contrast, Paul Graham says a lot of funny things without eve…
As to jokes: I disagree fundamentally. This is a silly little article anyway. I come out about even on jokes karma wise. You know whats worse than a bad joke though? PG ass kissing ;) Anyway, of course I knew I'd get more bad karma. I tend to enjoy it once in a while.
It is silly because beta/no beta is a binary decision, and the actual beta-ness of a product is a scaler.
So today they decide it has passed some arbitrary beta-ness threshold and the label goes away.
This and the fact it took five years with millions of happy users, all you can do is joke about it. Totally meaningless otherwise.
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
As to jokes: I disagree fundamentally. This is a silly little article anyway. I come out about even on jokes karma wise. You know whats worse than a bad joke though? PG ass kissing ;) Anyway, of course I knew I'd get more bad karma. I tend to enjoy it once in a while.
It is silly because beta/no beta is a binary decision, and the actual beta-ness of a product is a scaler. So today they decide it has passed some arbitrary beta-ness threshold and the label goes away. This and the fact it took five years with millions of happy users, all you can do is joke about it. Totally meaningless otherwise.
Thank you. This is a non-event. At least someone gets that and isn't looking for a 'profound analysis.'
False profundity makes for some of the worst comments.
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#38This 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.
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. Tell me how I can pay to use Gmail?
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html $50 per user per year after trial * The 99.9% uptime SLA for Google Apps is offered to organisations using Google Apps Premier Edition, as described in the Google Apps Premier Edition Terms of Service.
Interesting. Because when we were looking at signing up for the university version of Google Apps, they expected us to do our own tech support. Is it different for the corporate version?
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#40"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.
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.
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. :-)