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Why Does Beta Last So Long?
Carl Bialik writes "Noting that Google News has been labeled 'beta' for nearly three years, and Microsoft's antispyware program for nearly a year, the Wall Street Journal looks at why 'beta' lasts so long these days. The article mentions the usefulness of getting the masses to test the product, but also notices another possible reason: 'Betas also have become a marketing device in a fiercely competitive industry, allowing software and Internet firms to release new products or services sooner and cultivate early buzz. Betas, which once had been quietly distributed, are trumpeted in press releases and at news conferences. "I deplore it as a consumer; I admire it as a marketing professional," said Peter Sealey, a marketing professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola Co. "I can't come up with anything else in the entire marketing world where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed or inadequate product [and] it helps grow your user base." '"
You know, those tools you might work or live with who think that kmowing about and running the 'latest' software is some kind of life goal. Gleefully runnig bug-laden betas crashing their systems and reducing productivity.
I must be some kind of throw-back geek. I won't touch it until it ships. I don't do bug-testing for free...and no...none of these 'betas' are really that interesting anyway.
Blar.
Well, there is nothing wrong with Betas, except if their is no real intention of a production/stable release in a reasonable timeframe. Something in Beta for three years should raise questions. The implication is tha by tagging something as Beta, software/service suppliers can absolve themselves of responsibility for defects. This is sort of like an even further erosion of the standard EULA weaknesses regarding bugs and defects. Software that is in Beta indefinitely should be called "abandoned".
I remember reading an article on Wired a long time ago about why Google News will forever be beta: it's all about money and copyrights. As long as it is beta, Google can claim it makes no profit from Google News. As soon as it gets "released," though, every newspaper with a lawyer will try to shut it down.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Yeah, I was starting to get irritated at Firefox over that. That, and you can't uninstall the old ones because it'll break all of them.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
"I can't come up with anything else in the entire marketing world where marketers knowingly introduce a flawed or inadequate product [and] it helps grow your user base."
Think Sega dreamcast! Sure, it isn't software, but the flaw that shipped with it that allowed you to boot CD-rs was what sold most of those systems
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
That's the truth. My company QA's our software but in new routines (moderatly complex) we were having bugs that wouldn't be triggered for months. To eliminate the confusion of our customers on our new product features all new modules/reports/etc... come out as beta for at least the first month. It's the "take it with a grain of salt" model. I've found our customers like accessing new features (especially the ones they specifically request) earlier and have significantly less anger when a small glitch appears. Programers aren't perfect and end-user design docs are almost impossible to get 100% correct. Beta is a happy medium that should not be abused. That being said Google abuses the shit out of it. However, when you don't pay a dime for their services, can you really complain? (The answer is yes, with very little affect.)
But, are they making ENOUGH money from that to cover the cost of creating and maintaining the service? Now, I know that neither you or I can answer that question authoritatively
Perhaps a better way to make my point is that google aren't ready to put their full support team behind the product, so they market it is an "as is" product, and call it "beta" by way of covering their butts.
Yeah, because going out of Beta means that the license actually accepts liability, right?
Oh, wait. Non beta software is still sold as "use at your own risk".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
On the other hand there are people that don't use some software because it's beta, so I guess there's a karma: you gain some customers that don't complain about the product and you lose some that will never try as long as the product is beta (depending on the product and customers there might be more won than lost, but in such a cases probably didn't matter from the beginning if the product was declared final or not).
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
You could imagine how, say, Google rolling out a product prematurely could be bad if it fails. It would break that air of invincibility they currently enjoy. With the current scheme, they roll the product out as a Beta, if it succeeds you do the final release, if not, it never gets out of Beta, and you have a perfect score of successes because you never officially release your failures. That's my theory anyhow.
I think Google leaves something in the beta stage until they can figure out how to make money with it. Maybe I'm wrong, but the only thing I can think of that's not in beta is Adsense (other than search, obviously).
All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
"It's beta". Such a great excuse. Everybody's off the hook. Also: It's true. Everything is beta. When I was interviewing for entry level tech support back in the mid-90s, one of the test questions was "why might Netscape GPF"? I gave a laundry list of standard reasons, but at the end I put "the whole thing is really still beta anyway". The interviewer loved that and I got the job. Netscape had the gaul to take stuff out of beta, but it still crashed quite often. At least now they are being honest, although perhaps not for the right reason. Now, back to my much nicer job...
...so I wouldn't think the current trend of long-running beta releases has anything to do with whether or not they're ready for prime time. It sure looks like a lawsuit avoidance tactic to me.
is that off-topic or just [+0.5 mildly interesting] ?
I am a budding (Mac OS X) shareware author, currently running an open beta.
...
I am intending to charge about $35 for my software, but am currently giving away limited duration (three month) licences for free.
Before going public, I ran a closed beta for about three months, with 20 or so users that I recruited from various Mac OS X forums. This helped me eliminate the most egregious and common issues.
My public beta has now been running for about a month - I've had a couple of thousand downloads, and nearly four hundred registered users - mainly finding me through version tracker and macupdate listings.
The quality of the bug reports from my public beta users has generally been fantastic (it may help that I've promised bug reporters free permanent licences) - I have about 24 bugs in my bug tracker, of which 10 are open, and maybe half of these are serious. Generally my public beta users have been far, far more productive than my closed beta users - there are lots of issues that you simply aren't going to hit until you get out to a relatively large number of users, and these bug reports are like gold.
Once I've closed the remaining serious issues, and added one remaining feature, probably early in the new year, then I'll end the public beta, start doing publicity and send the product out for review, and start charging for licenses.
This seems like a very good deal for both sides to me - poossibly even a virtuous circle. Beta users get free early access to the software, but are aware that there may be unresolved issues. They also get a chance to influence the final form of the product - one could look at that in a very cynical way (they're doing the developers work for them), but the impression that I get is that people really appreciate this,
From the developers point of view, the larger public beta base enables a much higher quality final product, which clearly beneficial to both sides