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 th

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.