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July 8, 2009

Google Frees App Product Naming from the Oppression of Beta

gmail-no-beta.gifGoogle has finally removed the "beta" tag from their Google Apps, including Gmail. It only took them about two years to do it (Gmail has had it for an unbelievable five).

The New York Times asks "What took Google so long?"

Well, it might be that Google has a different idea of what "beta" means. Usually it means that the product is not ready for heavy business consumption, but Google Apps were certainly good to go from the start.

Still, Gmail has been the longest "beta" product ever. One of the Google gurus says, somewhat cryptically, "For every product we have goals for feature completeness and we feel we've now met them."

Maybe that's so, but many businesses did not want to use a beta product and the beta tag had become a "branding issue."

Or, to put it another way, "who would pay for 'beta?'"

Google says they only represent a "speck" of the total market for productivity apps, but without beta holding them back, there is no telling how fast that speck will grow.

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Posted by William Lozito at July 8, 2009 12:56 PM
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