Google Apps Leave Beta

Today Google announced that they're removing the "beta" label from Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk. They said, "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." Quoting the NYTimes: "'Obviously we haven't had a consistent set of policies or definitions around beta,' said Matt Glotzbach, a director of product management at Google. Mr. Glotzbach said that different teams at Google had different criteria for what beta meant, and that Google felt a need to standardize those. ... Practically speaking, the change will mean precious little to Gmail's millions of users. But it could help Google's efforts to get the paid version of its package of applications, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Docs and other products, adopted inside big companies."

Comments

I use Google Apps, but

[C_Kode]

We use Google Apps for business purposes, but selectively. It just doesn't work for all my documents. By the term "all", I mean most. We basically use it to keep track of certain project details among other things, but not for any of our real documents.

100 million

[necro81]

Gmail has 100 million users and has been around over five years. Apps has 1.75 million. So, yes, about damn time.

Re:Beta

[eldaria]

I have used the premium Google apps for a little over a year, and only today the logo had the beta label removed, I were actually reading about it on Engadget, flipped to the tab with my mail and saw that it had beta on the logo, refreshed the page and the beta label was gone.

Re:Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

>Wasn't the paid version non-beta all along?

Yeah, and it's reliable. There's really no reason for small and medium businesses to run their own mail servers anymore.

Re:Some say that the freebie version will end, too

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not true. From the Google official blog:

We've heard some questions about why the link to Google Apps Standard Edition disappeared from the Enterprise Apps home page, so we wanted to share the answer. As we explored a few design changes to the page, the link to Standard Edition was inadvertently dropped, although the free version of Apps was, as always, available here. We've put the link back where it belongs so that it's easy to find.

We have no intention of eliminating Standard Edition, and we apologize for any confusion.

Re:Beta

[Zarel]

Did you check "Enable pre-release features" or "Next generation" in the Google Apps domain settings? It's my impression that only explicitly enabling beta features like that would cause the "beta" label to appear. If those are unchecked, you should see no "beta" label.

Re:Beta or not...

[Tacvek]

Yes, but Google Apps uses your own domain name. Hence the reason why it was originally named "Google Apps for Your Domain". The name has since been shortened, but that fact still remains.