

Why Is Gmail Still in Beta? - chwolfe
http://www.slate.com/id/2215622/

======
9oliYQjP
Some Joe Users now associate beta with a sort of brand. I once worked with a
guy (who had no clue technically what he was doing) if I could take advantage
of the "beta technology". When I asked him what that meant, he said, "you
know, all the cool sites nowadays are using the beta!" When I pressed him
further and had him sit in front of a browser and point to this beta
technology, he finally just pointed out all the beta badges that the Web 2.0
sites were sporting.

So... maybe Gmail keeps the beta because now it's a brand association with
being cutting edge and cool or something.

~~~
mechanical_fish
It's true that much of the population has no idea what "beta" used to mean. I
had to explain it to someone the other day.

Perhaps we've passed the point where "beta" changes meanings in mainstream
usage. Oh, well, at least it didn't go the way of the word "hacker".

~~~
amalcon
It actually kinda went the opposite way...

------
pbz
What do you mean take it out of beta? The name of product is "GMail beta" ;-)

------
vaksel
its in beta because there is absolutely nothing for Google to gain by taking
it out of beta

~~~
patio11
Customers just _do not care_ about the things that keep developers up at
night. See also: version numbers, license text, whether it is compatible with
<insert any technology this question is ever asked about>, etc.

~~~
josefresco
Customers care of stuff doesn't work. And if Beta Gmail stopped working they'd
certainly care enough to call/email me all day crying bloody murder. What
option am I left then considering it's only beta software, and free at that?

The beta tag has become like those "void where prohibited", "some restrictions
apply", "limited warrenty" statements and the like. It's a cover your ass
tactic that has almost no real world meaning anymore.

------
jrockway
I don't understand people's obsessions with version numbers.

When I release a project, I start at 0.01, then release 0.02, and so on. The
version numbers mean nothing to me, other than that they are increasing.

I still have people email me, though, and say things like, "I saw your project
Foo::Bar, when do you think it will be 1.0?" I don't really know what to
say...

~~~
GavinB
If you care so little about version numbers, why do you start at 0.01? Why not
just start at 1 and save yourself the three characters?

~~~
jrockway
Convention.

~~~
kirubakaran
However you don't like convention when it comes to what 1.0 means?

~~~
jrockway
I don't like the convention where I have to decide whether or not something I
write is suitable for other people. They should read the code and decide for
themselves.

------
tokenadult
From my point of view, Gmail is still in beta because its contact list
functionality is still broken. I have to switch to "older version" to add new
names to a contact list successfully, using Firefox, and bizarrely when I use
Chrome, I can't display my contact lists at all in "new version" mode. There
are still some JavaScript mysteries to the implementation of Gmail that no one
at Google fully understands.

~~~
jonknee
Works fine for me.

------
buugs
I think they keep it in beta because it hasn't become the app they want it to
be yet. Google wants the end all email client not just a better alternative to
hotmail/yahoo/msn et cetera.

~~~
josefresco
In that regard, Google Search should be beta too.

------
abdulhaq
it's in beta because they are still working out how to charge for it. When
they do, it will be 'released'. My guess is they will charge for POP3 access
and other little luxuries.

------
yan
Must be a slow news day..

------
themanual
Because they dont have 100 million registered users testing the Gmail app for
them everyday YET!

