It's about managing expectations/perceptions: Gmail is in beta, so Google gets less flak for outages, account lockouts, etc. "It's free and beta, so it's unsup

It's about managing expectations/perceptions: Gmail is in beta, so Google gets less flak for outages, account lockouts, etc. "It's free and beta, so it's unsupported, take it or leave it". They have a strong position compared to other crappier webmail services. For browsers it's reversed. Beta = "Can I really trust their browser to handle my online banking SSL connections properly?" It's the "go straight to version 2 to increase adoption" phenomenon. Edit: Also, strategy. Gmail expands adsense footprint. Chrome is Google's attempt to compete with flash, silverlight, et al. for the future "web OS", following the rule that platforms always end up beating applications.