Gmail and other Google Apps ‘Out of Beta’

Google on Tuesday announced that its widely used applications and services are now out of the Beta phase, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk in both enterprise and consumer guises. The software giant does defend its decision to keep the beta versions of its apps around for so long, saying it differs from the traditional definition of beta as its Google Apps have service level agreements, 24/7 support and standards that meet or exceed non-beta software. Software tagged beta traditionally represents an unfinished product that is still being tested for bugs. Gmail has carried its beta tag for over five years, but remained virtually trouble-free during this period. Google points out more than 1.75 million companies, itself included, use Google Apps to run their operations.

The Google Apps suite launched two years ago and has grown from strength to strength with both consumer usage and enterprise. According to Google, more than 1.75 million companies around the world run the business on Google Apps.

While many of you may wonder what took so long, Google’s official response is likely to keep you unsatisfied. Matt Glotzbach, a director of product management at Google told the NYTimes:

“Obviously we haven’t had a consistent set of policies or definitions around beta, it was time to address the issue and bring the products out of beta. For business customers, it is an important sign in terms of the maturity of our product offering and commitment to this business,” Mr. Glotzbach said. “I’ve had C.I.O.s tell me that they would not consider a product labeled ‘beta.”

From the sounds of it, it appears the move is primarily to drive enterprise business into using Google Apps. For those of you concerned this will be the end of beta features, Google assures us that it has “much more in store…”

All of those features and services are being added without an increase to the $50 per user fee for GAPE, Google officials said.

"For too many companies looking at commercial Gmail, the beta label was like a blinking neon light that flashed "amateur, amateur…," said Matt Cain, an analyst with Gartner. "Companies did not want to engage a vendor that forced them to put their most mission-critical communication channel on a piece of beta code. Removing the beta label removes one of the major hurdles Google had to overcoming corporate resistance."

While Google claims the move is just semantics, it acknowledges that the "beta" tag was making corporate users uneasy and often unwilling to commit.

"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," Matt Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, said in a blog post Tuesday.

Even though the beta logos will be removed today, Google claims it will continue to develop the applications. Users will still have the option in Gmail's Labs tab in Settings to place the beta label and general look back into the Gmail interface.

At the same time, Google announced new Google Apps feature for large enterprises that include mail delegation, mail retention and enhancements to Apps reliability.