The future of Google is beta ?
Jeremy‘s written an excellent piece on how people forget the ‘beta’ label on products.
Traditionally we are familiar with beta software which we could install on our machine and try out the product before it went live.. and usually there was a gap of couple of months between a beta and the final launch of a product. With Internet services the same cycle continued, but some companies choose to stay in the ‘beta’ mode for longer then usual.. and the company leading the pack is Google.
Almost all google products other then search have the ‘beta’ stamp on them. But having the tag for more then a year (unless you are ID software or Microsoft) does not speak too good about the company’s product cycles. Take Froogle, it was launched on December 12th, 2002 and its about to turn 2 years old soon with the beta tag. And to be honest, I haven’t seen any new features added to the product since 2002.
So has the Froogle development team moved on to other things ? Will Froogle ever go gold ?
What about News, Orkut, Gmail etc etc ? Orkut is one of the worst product ever launched by google ( maybe that’s why they don’t brand it under google directly) and I am ready to bet 100 bucks it will have the beta tag for at least another year. And I wonder how many years I’ll have to wait before gmail is thrown open to public ( non-invite version ).
The future is in beta 😉
Google should change their name to GOOTA!
But, he is being a bit fatalistic by saying, “…his willingness to rely upon a beta service for something as important as e-mail.”
I mean, come on, how unsafe is it to the common e-mail user? Google is not going to throw their hands up tomorrow and say, “Ok, sorry, we can’t do this anymore. Bye bye.”
I guess it depends on how vital a part email plays in your life. *smirk*
lavannya here
hello kalyan..nice finding you here…
well…i blog too..but different sort of stuff… 🙂
The user picture of yours is cool! It rocks!
Heard gmail was in trouble in europe some thing like that .
Google is not going to throw their hands up tomorrow and say, “Ok, sorry, we can’t do this anymore. Bye bye.”\
But what if they do ? My sources from google tell me that they think gmail is not going to generate any money for them. What if they just ditch all the invite addresses and say.. we are gonna give out fresh accounts from scratch.. what is they close down orkut ??
I have a feeling they are leaving the beta tag just to have that freedom.
Re: lavannya here
Hi.. nice to see you here.. and drop in your blog url 😉
I hope its a photoblog 😉
I think orkut was maybe a distraction to find out how effective the invite only model is!
BTW Google doesn’t come anywhere close to ICQ… they have been in beta since their launch!(I’ve been using them since ’98! They are probably older than that.)
ICQ is still in beta ???
I don’t see any mention of that in their website.. nor did I ever knew it was in beta.. I used it from 1998 to 2000
Well what about it?
Don’t all free public services come with a disclaimer?
If assurance of service is just a moral responsibility which I am sure if time comes every company big or small will shrug
seems to have changed in the last one year…
Here’s a copy from last year… check the bottom of the page
http://web.archive.org/web/20030622150036/web.icq.com/
Concerning our Time Limited Free Beta software policy – No change is currently being considered in this policy, which has prevailed ever since we introduced our product. In any case, in the future, if we do consider any changes in this policy, an advance notice of at least 30 days will be given.
Some Interesting Trivia… ICQ.com didn’t always belong to Mirabilis!!
http://web.archive.org/web/19970408062228/http://www.icq.com/
And the footer that I posted above can also be found (with no changes at all.) on this page which dates back to 1997!
http://web.archive.org/web/19971210072826/http://www.icq.com/
Google Groups has been around for ages… and whatever it is that keeps that service viable… will also keep their Mail viable.
Plus they seem to have plans for paid mailboxes/pop3 access etc.(BTW What is it that makes Yahoo! Mail more viable than Google ? After all their ads use less bandwidth and are more difficult to block than Yahoo!’s, also they are easy on the eye.)
What if they converted orkut into an IM! (you already have the friends lists pre-prepared!) or atleast an IM service that allows you to import your friends list from orkut.
In case you haven’t noticed google mail and google groups are already interlinked.
Considering the tons of “features” that todays IM services have… people might take a liking to a simplistic interface.
Pot… Kettle…
Here’s what your non-beta for many years service offers me!
From http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
You agree that Yahoo! may, under certain circumstances and without prior notice, immediately terminate your Yahoo! account, any associated email address, and access to the Service. Cause for such termination shall include, but not be limited to, (a) breaches or violations of the TOS or other incorporated agreements or guidelines, (b) requests by law enforcement or other government agencies, (c) a request by you (self-initiated account deletions), (d) discontinuance or material modification to the Service (or any part thereof), (e) unexpected technical or security issues or problems, and (f) extended periods of inactivity.
Interesting.. I wonder why they were in beta for so long..
My sources from google tell me that they think gmail is not going to generate any money for them.
Well, they have one potential customer (here) willing to pay for the service if they give at least POP3, mail forwarding, and the ability to set the From field (not the Reply-To) to something else. And a support phone number. A plain HTML non-JavaScript interface wouldn’t hurt either.
I’m willing to bet 200 bucks 🙂 that Gmail is going to come out of beta and into final release by October 2004.
Good point. I think that most users realise this. Like I use gmail only for recreational email. Only morons would use a free email service for official business. But, like I said, the piece you pointed to is a bit too fatalistic. It’s like saying, Yahoo knows all my friends, they know everything about me, I am doomed.
Guys, have you noticed that Google Groups is not beta, and that there’s actually a Google Groups 2 beta?
Re: Pot… Kettle…
Thanks for validating what I said earlier
Two very different products…. the original Google Groups is a nntp web-frontend..
While the new one is pretty directly aimed at Yahoo! Groups(and at the same time incorporates the old one.)
From http://www.google.com/googlegroups/about.html
Google Groups is a simple and reliable service for managing and archiving mailing lists. In addition to basic mailing list functionality, all your mailing list content will be stored and searchable on the web. Unlike other free mailing list services, Google Groups offers generous storage limits and only displays relevant text ads (never banners or pop-ups).
Re: Pot… Kettle…
Isn’t this your favourite line? 🙂
The new Google Groups does Usenet too, so it’s going to completely replace the existing one. In other words, it’s a combination of Google Groups and Yahoo Groups. ;P
Thank you for elaborating what I said! 😛
While the new one is pretty directly aimed at Yahoo! Groups(and at the same time incorporates the old one.)
Orkut
what is they close down orkut ??
I’ll be glad. It’s a piece of trash. Slow, buggy, and needs a lot of work on the interface. Not a “google-like” product at all.
Nice userpic! 🙂
I feel Google has made a bad naming decision with GG2. It is very confusing to ppl who have been using it’s Groups search. Maybe they want to converge both of them in the future? 😉
Thanks.. pic taken by noella
Re: Orkut
Ditto!
The look
You’ve got a “what am i to do now?” look going. 😉
Re: The look
that’s when I blog 😉
sometime back I had some cookie that gave me this from the GMail interface. It said something similar to Yahoo!’s sign out page — “click here to sign out completely” and then it had a link to the New Accounts page. So yeah, I’m willing to bet Rs.100/- on atleast GMail going gold in less than a year 😉