Google's obsession with beta

[neverlate2day]

Have any of you wondered why google refuses to shed the tag beta from all their products.
That inconspicuous beta written right next to the second 'g'

Do others lhave insight like that OR are left confounded like me
It seems pretty silly to me

 

[grushca]

lol
tons of prod in dev -- thats fine with me
constant improvements and new features.
by this time its probably more like gmail 10.0 not beta

 

[kirtik]

I'm guessing it means if something goes wrong, they can simply point to the beta status.

 

[Twinkie]

That probably means you are using their products at your own risk, since they have not been "officially" released. That should not stop us from using Google, but it's pretty sneaky

 

[exemption]

I dont really care...as long as the product works fine..
:thefinger

 

[themcman1]

I think they just throw beta on there because it's still in development - although GMail to me seems like a finished product and I would say it was better than most webmail services out there.

 

[pietimer]

Haha, I love the title of this topic. It does seem like Google has a fear of commitment. They have some really cool applications (like Grand Central), but since they're beta you need a 'golden ticket' to get an account, which is kind of annoying. I guess they're reserving the right for it to be crappy, or canceled, or what have you. The annoying thing is that a lot of their beta apps come from start-up companies that they bought out. Then the project seems to just sit there in beta until Google comes out with some all encompassing tool that makes it obsolete--I suspect Grand Central will be killed off by Android.
I guess I should be ticked off because if Dialpad Com. still owned Grand Central I might be able to use it (I requested a Grand Central account from Google 5 months ago--still no word). Instead, I have to go through all-powerful Google to get my cool, useless crap. But, in the end I'm not annoyed because, hey, Google makes it cool, useless, FREE crap.

 

[Jordan C]

I guess it gives you the idea that there always improving there products, although there is the possible error prone idea it gives you as well. I guess.

 

[Smith6612]

I've always noticed that 95% of all of Google's things are in beta. Don't ask me why, but it seems to make Google funny looking. I do know that the Google G1 phone is already in final, not beta, the search engine is not in beta, and Google Video/YouTube is not in beta.

 

[swl1990]

Google has a fear of commitment

From this moment google can officially be considered manly =)

 

[vol7ron]

Have any of you wondered why google refuses to shed the tag beta from all their products.
That inconspicuous beta written right next to the second 'g'

Do others lhave insight like that OR are left confounded like me
It seems pretty silly to me

It's not always beta... just a long time until it becomes a full-fledged version. It is still in design and testing and therefore, there is no reason to take the beta away.

One product that was in beta and now isn't is Google's auto suggest. The main page (www.google.com) never used to have it, however you could go here (http://www.google.nl/webhp?complete=1&hl=en) which used to have the "beta" label before Google adopted it and added it to part of the main page.

I hope this helps shed some light.

 

[Twinkie]

They would not keep their search engine in beta because that would not be attractive for business. Most things that make them money, are not in beta.

 

[fempower]

There was an article in a recent mag about this (I think it was Networld World). The official line was something like that like offline software, people expect continual improvements and Google wants to make sure it's right first... something or other that the article author questioned. I just think that Google's dedication to making the stuff better benefits us all so they can call it whatever they want.

 

[Jon.Monreal]

I guess it gives you the idea that there always improving there products, although there is the possible error prone idea it gives you as well. I guess.

Indeed, what Google has here is the concept of a perpetual beta, a product that is always being improved and is never truly feature-complete.

Wikipedia has an article about it here.

 

[omoney]

They would not keep their search engine in beta because that would not be attractive for business. Most things that make them money, are not in beta.

I think google makes money from everything the develop, somehow... If they didn't why would the develop it at all?