Gmail is no longer Beta!

so it's taken how many years for them to accomplish this? It's been the most solid email service for years, and today July 7th, 2009, it finally drops the Beta from its name.

Tags: email, gmail, google, mail

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Permalink Reply by Dilyn Corner on July 7, 2009 at 11:52am: OMFG ARE YOU SERIOUS?!!?!?!?!

*Throws party*

FINALLY.

I think that Hotmail is in more of a beta than Gmail, and I was wondering why Gmail still had that beta attached to its name. I mean, it was the greatest thing ever. Amazing spam filters... Great features... It's made by Google... What's not to love?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Zune80 on July 7, 2009 at 2:36pm: Don't you think your enthusiasm is a little over animated? It's not like they changed it..they just finally had the guts to drop the BETA tag...something that should have been done years ago. :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dilyn Corner on July 8, 2009 at 3:34pm: LOL
I was being over dramatic!! It's fun :D

Now I see why my mom does it all the time... ^_^; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by CK13 on July 7, 2009 at 12:09pm: wow, its been in beta as long as some people go to college to become doctors, lol; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by jamesjimmy23 on July 7, 2009 at 12:17pm: Hum... interesting. I think the reason they kept beta tagged on it is because they were changing stuff so often. I'm sure they are going to keep on doing that but it makes it seem like more of a finished product without the beta tagged onto it.

Did you see this article? It explains more of the decisions.

And I'm glad to see that you can enable the grey BETA words back in the settings. It wouldn't be the same without it. :D; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Maxime J on July 7, 2009 at 3:28pm: LOL!!!

Gmail rocks.. Best email service I could find.. two thumbs up for Gmail!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Zune80 on July 7, 2009 at 2:34pm: Sorry, but Google should be embarrassed and ashamed that such a widely used webmail program was considered BETA for 5 years. There is absolutely no excuse for this other than to protect themselves from criticism when something was going wrong with the service. By doing this they could always say...Well it's still in BETA and bugs being worked out etc. Very tacky, and doesn't show much for their confidence level in dealing with critics.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by IMPMAC on July 7, 2009 at 3:36pm: But what if it did actually take 5 years to develop? How many years do you think it will take to make a service like Google mail?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Zune80 on July 7, 2009 at 5:29pm: To get everything planned out and functioning properly...a couple of years at most. Don't forget that Google was already massively successful with their search engine and had the server farms and money to go full speed ahead. They could have been out of BETA within a third of the time it took...at most.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Tyler Brown on July 7, 2009 at 9:57pm: Well, they probably kept the beta tag as, its probably their philosophy of the web, each site is just one big beta, constantly changing, evolving, etc.

I think their REAL betas were the features in Google Labs.

But, now that Google is wanting to cater more to the professional side of things, thats probably why they removed the tag.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Maxime J on July 7, 2009 at 5:41pm: They've been playing with features quite a bit too.. Maybe that's why they kept it in BETA for that long...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Zune80 on July 7, 2009 at 10:09pm: Yes, but if software vendors did that we would still be using Microsoft Windows 1.0 BETA or Mac OS 1.0 BETA. We use version numbers for a reason don't we? It's for evolving changes or new features, or bug fixes etc. Again, I just think they wanted a safety net to use if things didn't work out as they went along. Companies need to have confidence in their own product before any consumer will. Removing the BETA tag years ago would have given them the same results they are looking for today...only much sooner.; ▶ Reply to This