The Longest Beta on Record?
Posted by Harry McCracken | Tuesday, March 08, 2005 9:19 AM PT
Additional thought on my last post: Google News is a mere infant compared to Google Groups, Google's newsgroup service, which dates back to February of 2001, when Google acquired the even older Deja.com (formerly DejaNews, and an essential tool for as long as I can remember).
Four years later, Google Groups is
still officially in beta.
Maybe Microsoft should be paying attention. If they did the same thing, there would probably be fewer complaints
Has there really been any significant development done on Google Groups in the last four years? How about Google News? I'm not sure these services are remotely priorities for Google.
A beta that lasts for 4 years is meaningless. If they arent actively working on it and fixing bugs or adding features, essentially what you have is a service that people use every day that doesnt quite work right and they can ignore by saying "oh...well its beta"
Posted by David P. on Tuesday, March 08, 2005, 04:12 PM (PST)
A beta that lasts for 4 years is meaningless. If they arent actively working on it and fixing bugs or adding features, essentially what you have is a service that people use every day that doesnt quite work right and they can ignore by saying "oh...well its beta"
Listen to you! Does the word WINDOWS ring a bell?- DOH !
Wasn't ICQ in beta and alpha for many years, even though the program was stable. Beta software among most software has become so meaningless that I treat it just like a full version.
Knowing that Google groups is still officially in beta, does anyone know what will happen to Google mail? When will it be available to everyone?
Every piece of software is beta. always.
well... since beta is essentially a full version then I guess Netscape Beta is the full version of rht enew netscape browser 8
listen, I don't mind beta and infact use it myself for development purposes, but there is a time where your just copping out of saying it is a full version... maybe, instead of having so many hands in so many pies, try to finish a version of a product or 2.
Google news is done, Google groups is done. let it go. On the other hand, GMail will probably stay in beta another 2 years, so will Google Maps and its desktop software... why? because Google wants a Google desktop so these pieces of the puzzle is not a finished prouct... its not a strong argument for continuous beta (I like to see Google call its search beta or Google Ads beta) but it can work for SOME products
Give them a little credit. They just recently overhauled the entire 'groups' interface