Slashdot Mirror
Gmail Marks Five Years In Beta
TrekkieTechie writes "Though in fact the big day was April 1st, Google celebrated the five-year anniversary of the popular online email service Gmail with a post on the service's blog, saying 'we want to give a big thank you to all of you who use Gmail every day, to those who've been around since the beginning, to those who were using an AJAX app before the term AJAX was popular, to those who started chatting right in your email ... we couldn't have gotten here without you.' The milestone has also prompted speculation about when, if ever, Gmail will lose its beta status, and Ars Technica recently sat down with Todd Jackson, Gmail's Project Manager, to discuss the reasoning behind that nagging beta label."
The milestone has also prompted speculation about when, if ever, Gmail will lose its beta status, and Ars Technica recently sat down with Todd Jackson, Gmail's Project Manager, to discuss the reasoning behind that nagging beta label.
Whatever the reason, it certainly is making people talk about it.
Well, despite that a lot of Google's products seem to still have the beta tag, it also means that they aren't necessarily going to be held to the same standard. For example, when Gmail decides to up and die for a few hours while they upgrade.
Does it matter if it's beta when it's still the best and most reliable free email service around?
This also marks the five year anniversary of me not using HotMail or Outlook Express.
A Beta tag only makes sense if there is a "final" release planned at some point in the future. If it's going to be forever in Beta, it becomes meaningless, just like those web pages of 1999 with an eternal "under construction" gif.
They know everything about you. Or at least their AI does.
It's an interesting model: to enable truly targeted advertising using the personal information contained in the person's email.
So much for privacy, I suppose.
Gmail is the beta for the Google Apps mail component. It's not likely that it will ever come out of beta status: it being beta has a function.
the pun is mightier than the sword
Beta no Beta it has been a Good experience using Gmail . Moreover it changed the Market freeing us of Quota's . . . .
AJ
"Beta" is just being used as a buzz word to make Gmail perpetually seem like the hip new computer thing.
they know i have erectile-dysfunction and am also insecure about my bust size, and on a more dubious note, I am most likely personally responsible for all Nigerian immigration to the US. Oh yeah, I also get mail from the future...wait a second, I'm thinking about my old yahoo mail account. seriously though, how much energy is wasted hosting my personal collection of over 100,000 unread spam emails.
Much like my puberty, some things are neverending.
I hope version 1.0 will have a decent, non-beta looking user interface.
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Generally, any usage of the Beta tag is meaningless in the world of web-based applications. In fact, it's meaningless for most web-pages. The reason is very simple: a site should be constantly working to improve and change. The change that happens is not bound by the traditional software version release, either. All websites are, by default, in a perpetual beta, whether its users know it or not, which makes the label itself meaningless.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
I don't really mind the beta tag - sure it's dumb, but it doesn't really matter. Their explanation, though, is offensively stupid. Keeping a semi-permanent beta status on a stable and usable product because you want to add more features, features that obviously take several months or years to add, is simply an absurd redefinition of what beta means.
I wonder what their standards are to increment a full version number, and how many generations will have come and gone before that happens.
Omega?
Would sound more "cool" in any case.
DO NOT CLICK the link in the parent. Especially if you are at work. :-(
Google is notorious for keeping most of it's apps in the Beta stages because if it works, it's considered a fantastic app and when some hacker finds a huge security flaw in it or something of that nature, Google can just throw up their hands and say "Hey, it's still in Beta".
I joined on April 12, 2004 (invited by a Google employee).
Can anyone who didn't work for Google at the time beat that?
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
This is Unix.
I know this!
That's from Jurassic Park.
GMail was innovative and provided a better service than hotmail or yahoo did at that time. It forced the competitors to provide a much better package in the long run. I don't know why people are so hanged up on the beta naming.
This is from Jurassic Park. I know this!
Much as GMail is an interesting mail platform, I don't like the idea of Google getting all of my email to look thru, along with my entire contact list and traffic records with them. Even if GMail received and sent only encrypted messages, the metadata would be private. And Google already has my entire search history, as well as a lot of my click trail (REFERER incoming to searches, cached/PDF-to-HTML docs, YouTube, whatever might even run across a Google backbone). I don't need one filthy rich entity with cross-referenced records of my entire online activity.
If the GMail server were downloadable to my own server or independent ISP, I'd use it. I'd love it as software. But as service, it seems too tempting for Google to be evil.
--
make install -not war
...when Google starts charging for it.
mmmm...forbidden donut
I mean, I love gmail because of the reliability, effective spam filtering, volume and imap access. But what is this AJAX thing about? Can I eat it? Can I use my key to sign or encrypt my messages over it? No? I stay with my local client then. Thanks.
I love the Gmail interface. It simple, clean and easy to use. No flashy ads, no weird landing page when you first login, and easy to remember shortcut keys. I even love the nice whats-it-called-indicator for a mail where a '>>' is shown for a direct mail to you and a '>' for a mail you are one of the party.
Whats more, I like this interface better than thunderbird/outlook where they have 2 panes.. one for the list if mails, and one to read the mail. That never made sense UI wise.. a user will only be looking at one thing at a time, either selecting a mail or reading a mail.. and Gmail's ajax interface tops here. I cant imagine life without the conversation model.. Thunderbirds's treeview is simply no match (aside: is there a client that does has gmail like conversation view)
I'm no fanboi.. but I do like to recommend very well though out and user-friendly products, and Gmail is certainly one of them.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
it is plausible deniability front page for hidden community websites. You would be surprised how much few of them are alive. Oops. First rule of hidden community... Almost violated.
God's gift to chicks
I made a Google Analytics cake and it wasn't even an anniversary... http://www.imbimp.com/2009/03/google-analytics-dashboard-cake/
...because there are still some very persistent performance issues that need to be worked out. The AJAX interface is incredibly sluggish on just about any browser/CPU combination I use it with. Very frustrating to have to wait seconds after each submit for the interface to respond.
This is further proof of the fallacy that just because something is affiliated with Google, it must be a good thing.
Long live mutt. (Don't laugh...the response time for mutt on even my slowest machine is several orders of magnitude greater than Gmail.)
Website "still under construction" after 5 years.
Seriously, Gmail's great. It's doing better in beta than most other final-product web-based emails. it seems several web-based email setups can't even synchronize the "inbox" indicator(ie boldface to show you # of emails) with the new emails on the right frame. I'm looking at you Outlook webmail & squirrelmail. Gmail has none of that.
Perhaps I too should adopt a beta suffix. Maybe then I'd get so many on my nuts as Gmail does.
5 more years and we'll finally have the feature set of PINE, then maybe Thunderbird. WOO!
And the AJAX thing, WHO CARES. Seriously, Outlook Web Access had AJAX years before, and you know what, I really could care less. I need an email client that can do basic things like send, receive, encrypt, search, etc. I'm frankly quite unimpressed by Gmail, but for webmail it is most definitely one of the better clients out there. It'd be nice to get rid of a thick email client, but those days are still far away for many of us.
I remember "buying" my Gmail account back in June of 2004 as the invitations started flowing out. Something like three bucks on Ebay got me my account that I still use today. I'm not going to say it was the best three dollars I ever spent because I probably could have gotten a free invite like a week later, but it definitely is the best email client I've ever used. Heck, maybe the best single site besides the great Google.com itself.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
To nitpick on the Slashdot summary Todd Jackson is a Product Manager of Gmail, not a Project Manager. The product manager is responsible for shaping the product's direction, vision and features, whereas the project manager is responsible for project schedules and such.
gmail is in a perpetual mode of integrating new features and services... so i believe until and unless google thinks that they have stuffed in a lot and everything just works out of the box, they are not going to take it out of beta.
Originally it was going to be 'Google Better' but they had a crap spell checker so it came out 'Google Beta' and they are too embarassed to admit it it.
That was hilarious.
I don't get many of those anymore, they're mostly for male enhancement pills. I have to go to a porn blog to fill the void left by the absence of hottie mail.
Sent from my iPhone
To me it seems that Google likes to use perpetual beta status as a cop out in case there are problems. The "Oh that's broken? Then it's beta," sort of mentality. It is kind of a "Get out of trouble free," card.
I mean normally, people understand that beta apps have no guarantees of anything. They are test versions. Whole idea is the company wants to shake it down and see what is wrong. Testers, be they internal professional testers or a wider public test, understand that there may be bugs, data loss, and so on. It isn't the final version.
For example I've done beta tests on some online games like Diablo 2. It was well understood that the characters on the beta server would be gone after the game was actually released. Same deal with World of Warcraft. They have a test server and it gets wiped out all the time and you have to recopy data to it.
The problem in the Google case is there's no way you are actually still doing a beta publicly for this long. Gmail isn't actually a "beta" this isn't a shakedown period. Thus it leads me to believe they perpetually call it a beta as a cop out, a hedge, more or less. Something goes wrong with it and they just point and cry "BETA!" to try and deflect any criticism.
Keeping everything in Beta is Google's way of explaining to investors why none of their non-search products are profitable.
Just need to fix that "conversation" bug first.
Google Apps Premier Edition does not have a beta label and even provides a 99.9 uptime SLA. It also provides legal language covering confidential data and intellectual property, for those who are concerned about Google managing their business data.
I think the "beta" remains on the consumer free edition because they are still not sure if it will turn a profit, and they do not want to provide an SLA. I'm not even sure what an SLA would look like on a free product.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Does your business encrypt all e-mail? If not, what technology is preventing your ISP from simply saving out a copy of everthing you send and receive?
When you purchase a service, your best protection is your contract with the service provider. Free Gmail is still in beta, but Google Apps Premier Edition has a price, SLA, and terms and conditions that protect confidential data and intellectual property. It is a real business relationship. I would be wary of putting a business onto free beta Gmail, but I have a lot fewer concerns about Apps Premiere Edition.
Now you might say that the business is putting itself at risk by trusting Google to handle its data security. But really the risk assessment there has to take into account the company's own competence at data security.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Microsoft is continually trying to improve their products too--would you say they were wrong to use the "beta" tag on the recent free version of Windows 7?
Windows 7 beta was free to anyone because Microsoft did not consider it good enough yet to charge for, and they needed to test it and gather data. Google thinks of itself more like Microsoft than like Slashdot--a professional software company. You better believe that Salesforce.com goes through real beta phases before they roll things out to their paying customers. They do not beta test on paying customers.
Likewise if Google's strategy is to eventually build a software subscription revenue stream (and I think it is), then it makes sense to have a free version for testing and data-gathering. Like Microsoft Windows, they call it their beta version. Unlike Microsoft Windows, the beta and commercial versions of Gmail can exist simultaneously because they are fully hosted by Google.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
1) to denote the fact that the application may, at any time and without warning, change significantly. This seems likely, considering the features that have been added in the last 5 years. OR
2) Google is trying to change the world by reserving version 1.0 for a version that is as nearly feature-complete and bug-free as humanly possible. This is in contrast to certain OS and software vendors whose products require constant patches and updates just to scratch the surface of being secure.
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"As the conclusion to the longest April Fools joke ever, we hereby announce that we are deleting all existing Gmail accounts and their contents.
Or they might also say : it is free to stay on Gmail, but you will have to pay to get out ! :-D
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
is NOT a technological beta. The question for google is: if we provide some service in a high quality for a certein circle of users for a certain price, will we make earnings on that or will we pay for that? In the end, the sum of all effects must be right. This means, that if killing some downtime for a service as complex as gmail would cost you, in relation to the revenue brought by it, more than it's worth then this business model will be 'just beta'. Translated to clearer words this means: gmail seems to make not very big losses and the positive effects (for google) seem to be close to zero, or at least google seems not to see this as their future business. After all it is better to terminate a beta-service than to disappoint paying customers by not being able to keep up with the support needed. I guess one of the issues with e-mail is that hard failures should be more seldom than in a web-search and your support *must* be more local. If e-mail fails, a major communications path to support is cut. If you are a local provider, people will call and you can answer. If you have 100Million users calling in from around the world, you either are very prepared or you have a HUGE problem. Forget public forums, in such a case they explode to the point of being useless to the novice. I also dont think that most gmailers are able to operate google search i a constructive way or finding the way to other newpages. So google would have to announce such a massive failure on its homepage that is has massive troubles. The shame would be that the frontpage containing the search is page reched by www.google.com. So the question: what will happen if g-mail has a massive, distributed failure (e.g. DDOS by spam-mail trough a security leak) is relevant to the image of the core part of the company doing web searches. I am pretty sure they consider this before they promise ultimate support by taking gmail out of beta. Nevertheless i never understood the hype about gmail.At the time when they offered 1G space, 100M was enough for me. At the time when i needed 300M, my normal provider (payed) offered 1G for each of the 10 Mailboxes i can theoretically have on my domain. I have all the access i want (protocols) there and i have not seen a bigger outage.
Oh yeah - there's one I used to frequent a long time ago that went into hiding while I was on holiday, it had a site placeholder-style thing with a lorem ipsum on it. There was some secret way to get in but I wasn't around to find out.
THIS IS WHAT I GET FOR VISITING YOU, VANUATU!
Ezekiel 23:20
As she clicks her way through a GUI...