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Google has a harder time finishing projects than I do.

Started by Etnu Feb 12, 2005 at 11:09 PM 18 replies 2.9k views

Original Post

Feb 12, 2005 at 11:09 PM

Having recently unveiled a few new services, I decided to take a quick look at google and uncovered the following: Services that Google offers (not counting their real revenue generators like adsense/adwords, and other stuff that ordinary users don't ever use) Search Image Search Alerts Answers Catalogs - Beta Directory Froogle - Beta Groups - Beta Maps - Beta Video - Beta News - Beta Suggest - Beta Scholar - Beta Gmail - Beta Desktop - Beta Picasa - Beta (?) Blogger Toolbar Books - Beta Personally, I see the vast majority of those items as just being components of "search", but I dunno, maybe Google sees them as fundamentally different products. Either way, isn't it about time that they actually made some of these projects no longer "Beta"? How long have google groups, froogle, and gmail been around for now?

Binomine

Feb 12, 2005 at 11:12 PM

eh, as long as they don't break ICQ's record, it's cool in my mind.

smart_idiot

Feb 12, 2005 at 11:14 PM

If it isn't officially released, it can't be offically broken. It's quality control at it's finest.

Raduprv

Feb 12, 2005 at 11:15 PM

What's wrong with it being Beta, as long as it works fine?

Cibressus

Feb 12, 2005 at 11:20 PM

most of those are still in beta, because thiers some weird law that once they come out of beta they have to start paying royalties.

Extrarius

Feb 12, 2005 at 11:21 PM

Quote:
Original post by Etnu
[...]How long have google groups [...] been around for now?

The new "google groups trying to be a message board instead of a usenet archive in such a way as to reduce the usability to 0%" is fairly new.

kSquared

Feb 12, 2005 at 11:22 PM

Quote:
Original post by Etnu
Either way, isn't it about time that they actually made some of these projects no longer "Beta"? How long have google groups, froogle, and gmail been around for now?

You may be forgetting the cardinal rule of software development -- namely, pick any two: cheap, fast, correct. In any case, most of these projects you mention are only a year or so old. That's not particularly unreasonable.

Conner McCloud

Feb 12, 2005 at 11:27 PM

Quote:
Original post by Raduprv
What's wrong with it being Beta, as long as it works fine?

More importantly, what's the point of beta if it never ends?

I'm thinking that in some cases, its not so much "does it work" as "do we need it?" By keeping them in beta, Google has no obligation to keep them around.

Gmail especially. Lets assume its 100% ready to go live. Google runs some numbers and realizes they can't possibly live up to their promise of 1GB per account. In beta, they can just close up shop and write it off as a failed experiment if that's what the numbers call for. After beta, they have an official obligation to their users to keep their accounts open.

So they're going to stay in Beta until they're completely sure its here to stay.

CM

guywithknife

Feb 13, 2005 at 12:23 AM

Surely the Beta status of their products is just a clever marketing plan to make people want it.

[Edited by - issch on February 13, 2005 4:23:19 AM]

Raduprv

Feb 13, 2005 at 12:25 AM

I don't think google would drop gmail, that would piss off a lot of people and damage their reputation. But with google mail it's understandable, they want to see how many users they can handle first, how many new machines they need, etc.
With the rest of the stuff, I also don't think they plan to get rid of it, I just think don't want people to think that this is the final version (people are more critical to non Beta software). Maybe they plan to do some changes, adjustments, etc.

Etnu

Feb 13, 2005 at 1:45 AM

Quote:
Original post by Cibressus
most of those are still in beta, because thiers some weird law that once they come out of beta they have to start paying royalties.

What kind of crack are you smoking?

zer0wolf

Feb 13, 2005 at 1:48 AM

Quote:
Original post by EtnuWhat kind of crack are you smoking?

The clean, uncut kind. [wink]

desertcube

Feb 13, 2005 at 5:42 AM

Quote:
Original post by Etnu
Quote:
Original post by Cibressus
most of those are still in beta, because thiers some weird law that once they come out of beta they have to start paying royalties.
What kind of crack are you smoking?

Actually, I heard something similar to this. This article says that google news is still in beta (after three years) because of the legal issues.

Quote:

So while other online publishers like Yahoo News and MSNBC earn tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year and continue to grow, Google News remains in beta mode -- three years after it launched -- long after most of the bugs have been excised.

The reason: The minute Google News runs paid advertising of any sort it could face a torrent of cease-and-desist letters from the legal departments of newspapers, which would argue that "fair use" doesn't cover lifting headlines and lead paragraphs verbatim from their articles. Other publishers might simply block users originating from Google News, effectively snuffing it out.

Crispy

Feb 13, 2005 at 5:58 AM

I always wanted "Google Time" to be included in that list: type in 'time in CityNameOfYourChoice' and Google returns the current time in that city of the world. Easy to do and extremely useful for the average travelling type. I'm thinking about emailing them about it.

Etnu

Feb 13, 2005 at 7:52 PM

Quote:
Original post by desertcube
Quote:
Original post by Etnu
Quote:
Original post by Cibressus
most of those are still in beta, because thiers some weird law that once they come out of beta they have to start paying royalties.
What kind of crack are you smoking?

Actually, I heard something similar to this. This article says that google news is still in beta (after three years) because of the legal issues.
Quote:

So while other online publishers like Yahoo News and MSNBC earn tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year and continue to grow, Google News remains in beta mode -- three years after it launched -- long after most of the bugs have been excised.

The reason: The minute Google News runs paid advertising of any sort it could face a torrent of cease-and-desist letters from the legal departments of newspapers, which would argue that "fair use" doesn't cover lifting headlines and lead paragraphs verbatim from their articles. Other publishers might simply block users originating from Google News, effectively snuffing it out.

That would apply for Google News, sure (though there are just as many arguements that it would boost traffic on those sites, but anyway...), but not any of the other services.

And that's still not a law, merely a fear.

Stonicus

Feb 13, 2005 at 7:54 PM

I think it just lookes better to have a big list of features like that for when the IPO went public, and to keep that list for each infusion of stock into the market. One is coming up soon I think, or just happened. Something like that.