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.
Gmail is out of beta
41–50 of 51 posts
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 p…
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Re: Gmail is out of beta
#43What 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.
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."
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 p…
They're sold as one big SaaS package to companies. They're taking the "beta" label off so said companies will stop bitching.
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#45This 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…
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.
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 p…
They're sold as one big SaaS package to companies. They're taking the "beta" label off so said companies will stop bitching.
Yes, that's the obvious conclusion to draw in this case, but it still doesn't reveal the general rule.
For example, Google Groups has been out of beta for years, yet I find it unusably bad (e.g., no spam filtering or even killfiles so I have to hit "Older>>" about 5 times to see the next actual post), and based on a couple reviews I found just now, I'm not alone. I doubt they removed the "beta" label from GG so they could sell it as a service to companies.
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
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…
Its cool broseph :) We're fine, and this has all bee nrelatively harmless. I retract my pooping on you.
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're sold as one big SaaS package to companies. They're taking the "beta" label off so said companies will stop bitching.
Yes, that's the obvious conclusion to draw in this case, but it still doesn't reveal the general rule. For example, Google Groups has been out of beta for years, yet I find it unusably bad (e.g., no spam filtering or even killfiles so I have to hit "Older>>" about 5 times to see the next actual post), and based on a couple reviews I found just now, I'm not alone. I doubt they removed the "beta" label from GG so they…
I find Google Groups awful in terms of usability too !
It's extremely difficult just to find your own post, then you have to understand why you can't post here, that you must subscribe to this group first there etc etc...
No wonder they're switching to getsatisfaction (http://getsatisfaction.com/google/products)
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#49One 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.
By the way, if anyone's wondering, I verified that this Labs feature actually exists!
Re: Gmail is out of beta
#50This 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…
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.
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.