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They used to do public betas. I remember Gmail being labeled beta in the early days.
by arcbyte 3y ago
They used to do public betas. I remember Gmail being labeled beta in the early days.
- amenghra 3y agoGmail was in beta for 5 years, from 2004 until 2009 — imho it didn’t make much sense to label something as beta when it is used by ~1B people.
- kmlx 3y agoi think it's about expectations
- londons_explore 3y agoThing is... imagine they had announced "Thanks for being part of the gmail beta. We learnt a lot, but have now decided to close GMail. You have 3 days to download your emails and find a new email provider". A lot of people would have been very pissed off, even though it said 'beta'.
- arcbyte 3y agoAs I remember, it would have been very odd for them to do that in 2008 or 2009 when it was so immensley popular. But that was 4 or 5 year into it's life, well beyond the typical lifetime of Googles products. Them shutting it down in 2005 or 2006 would have been annoying or disappointing like the shutdown of Google Wave but understandable. It's all about brand expectations. Google is synonymous with unreliability because they don't have another brand to shoulder that association. It used to be "Beta" but no longer.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThe point is that their "release stage" marking was always fantasy land. Yes, I would be pissed if they had shut down GMail after 4 years, regardless of whether it was marked "Beta", because by that point it had a ton of users and clearly a ton of investment. A big problem is that nobody believes their designations anyway. GMail was in beta for years when it was obviously a mature product, while "Of course we're investing a ton in Stadia..." only to shut it down a couple months later.
- cptaj 3y agoI think its about copping out of any responsibility. Sure, go ahead. But the market will take notice if you do that.
- kmlx 3y agoright, that too. but i prefer the honesty of having the “beta” label than the lack of it.
- amenghra 3y agoIt’s impossible to go back in time and tell, but I bet lots of companies were opting for Microsoft Exchange/Web Outlook around 2007-2008, because Gmail was advertised as beta. If they had removed the beta label sooner, they might have attracted businesses to GSuite sooner? It’s a fine line to walk: you want to iterate quickly on one hand but some users need stability on the other.
- voytec 3y agoYeah, with unlimited storage for life. Acquiring userbase with empty promises is their M.O.
- thfuran 3y agoWasn't it originally 1 GB? Then they doubled it on April fools one year and started increasing it from there.
- ssdspoimdsjvv 3y agoIt even had a counter that was continuously incrementing (at the end by an incredibly low rate, but still)
- wolrah 3y agoWhen was Gmail ever sold as unlimited? When it came out the big deal was that it offered 1GB, which absolutely destroyed the 5-10MB most free providers were offering at the time. I recall a time where they were raising the limit constantly and even advertised that fact, that for most users your available space was going to increase faster than you could use it, but there was always a limit somewhere.
- voytec 3y agoWasn't it marketed as unlimited during invite-only beta?