Google Finally Removes ‘Beta’ Label from Gmail, Other Apps

Today, Google announced it is finally peeling the ‘Beta’ label off Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and GTalk.

Gmail, one of the leading email services, was launched 5 years ago. Google Apps suite, which includes Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and more, is used by nearly 2 million companies worldwide. Google hopes to make Google Apps more appealing to enterprises, explains Dan Olds, principal analyst with the Gabriel Consulting Group, “Taking the beta tag off of Google Apps is kind of like taking the training wheels off of your kid’s bike. If there were problems, Google could always fall back on the ‘but it’s a beta’ line either explicitly or implicitly. But now that the apps are fully baked they don’t have that excuse anymore and will be held to a higher standard.”

Google also introduced two new features to Gmail for its enterprise customers today: email delegation, which allows administrative assistants to send e-mail on others’ behalf, and an email retention tool that lets companies automatically purge old e-mails after a certain period of time.

Google assures App users that the removal of the ‘Beta’ label in no way means that the company will stop innovating, updating, and adding new features to its Google Apps services.

Source

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Tags: Beta, Gmail, Google, Google Apps, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Talk, GTalk

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.