The announcement made yesterday by Google How Gmail and the rest of the services in Google Apps (Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk) will be promoted from the stage of beta, made to see everything www-ul of reactions and conclusions that are more than that. For some users the surprise was like Gmail was all this time in beta (category of which I belong, although I use this 4-year e-mail customer). Others have wondered why this stage lasted so long, and most do not understand why Google made this decision just now, when they had already used to use a service in Beta of 5 years.
The clarification came quickly from The official blog al Google:
Ever since we launched the Google Apps suite for businesses two years ago, it’s had a service level agreement, 24/7 support, and has met or exceeded all the other standards of non-beta software. More than 1.75 million companies around the world run their business on Google Apps, including Google. 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. 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.
Google also announced that once with promotion from beta, Google Apps suite has also received other gifts: Offline access to e-mail and calendar and Faster access to Google Services by users BlackBerry There are only two of them. In addition, Gmail users who do not want to give up beta, have the option to reactivate this stage in Settings-> Lab.
However, we realize that after five years, this leaves some of you wrestling with some tough questions. How will you ever get used to using Gmail without that familiar grey “BETA” text greeting you when you log in everyday? What example will you cite the next time you make an internet joke about perpetual betas? Don’t despair… for those of you long-time Gmail-ers who might feel some separation anxiety, we’ve got a solution. Just go to Settings, click on Labs, turn on “Back to Beta,” and it’ll be like Gmail never left beta at all.
:)
