A Personal Blog
Do Google's Products EVER Leave Beta?
Just curious.
Google News: Launched November 2001
Froogle: November 2003
Gmail: April 2004
Orkut: January 2004
Google Local: March 2004
Google Scholar: November 2004
Am I missing any? Google has a hell of a lot of products in beta. Not in beta? Well, a few. AdWords. AdSense. Google Answers. Google Alerts. Google Groups. Google Toolbar.
But, all of the non-search related products that Google has developed ARE in beta as far as I’m aware. Gmail and Orkut specifically.
I love Google’s products, but I swear they have the lowest beta-to-release ratio in the world. And they’re one of the only software companies I know that don’t actually have released dates!
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Jeremy Wright on November 19, 2004 at 4:24 pm, and is filed under IT Thoughts. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |
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about 7 years ago
Google News is in beta since they’re realized it’s profitless :p
Local’s yet to be perfected. Scholar came out like, 2 days ago..
Froogle I would assume is similar to News, it’s profitless.. gmail I think still has a few issues, and lack of features (I think gmail’s actually in beta, not just “beta”), and I’ve never even looked at orkut so I have no idea about that one.
about 7 years ago
I just found out about Google Scholar too and love it. (Though I would like to see an ability to sort by date).
Personally, I’m just glad that they do release these to the general public for “beta” testing. Just think about all the things they are working on in private “alpha” testing right now that hasn’t gotten to the beta stage yet!
You probably forgot the most important one. Back in ’99 Google (as in the search) was still beta. http://www.google.com/holidaylogos99.html
about 7 years ago
Google News is not pointless, I use it every once in a while, it’s quite nice.
I’ll agree on Froogle, it’s kind of pointless, as you can’t trust all of the sites that it crawls. It would be nice if you could choose only certain stores (outpost.com, bestbuy.com, circuitcity.com, toysrus.com, walmart.com, etc.), THEN it would have a point.
Orkut: January 2004
Google Local: March 2004
Google Scholar: November 2004
Never heard of any of those.
about 7 years ago
Hehe, ICQ is a lot worse. I don’t think they’ve ever released a non-beta version.
about 7 years ago
I think it is a bit of the spirit of Google, hire as many computer people as possible and just see what they come up with. Up it to production state if it starts to make any money. For Froogle I think it is bad. Publishers that have a store have to upload a file every other month with all their files if they are not automatically crawled. And in the process there is at least to steps witch involves some Google person that has to approve it. First your store must be “approved” then your feed must be “approved”. This will not work in a big scale unless they charge money for listings, which they currently state they don’t.
about 7 years ago
Google Suggest another Beta :)
It can read your mind…. spooky!
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en