Gmail launched in March of 2004. That means that the service has been up and running for longer than the entirety of World War II American involvement in World War II. It now has tens of millions of users.
Google – it’s time to lose the “beta” tag.
(Yeah, I bet all you guys forgot that was still up there.)
According to Wikipedia:
Betaware is a nickname for software which has passed the alpha testing stage of development and has been released to a limited amount of users for software testing before its official release.
Insisting that a wildly successful full-featured website is still in beta is like saying, “Oh, this old site? It’s okay, I guess. One day it’ll be good enough so that we can stop being ashamed of it.” It’s the web design equivalent of showboating.
Let me ask you guys, is it possible that nobody over there is aware they still have the word “beta” up there? Maybe if it was pointed out to them, they’d be like, “Whoa, didn’t Roberts take that down last year?” “Me?! I thought you took it down!” “Well, let me just open up Photoshop here… okay problem solved. Thanks!”
UPDATE: This post originally said that gmail had existed for longer than “the entirety of World War II.” This is not in fact the case. The error has been corrected, and its author forced to watched all of that Ken Burns documentary.
Um…. dude. WWII lasted a mite bit longer than just shy of five years.
It actually lasted six years and one day, to be precise.
Corporate strategy. Plausible deniability. All that kinda jazz.
Almighty Tallest –
First of all, I love love love your name. Big Zim fan.
Second of all, you are absolutely right. What I actually meant to say was “the American involvement in WWII,” Dec ’41 to Aug ’45. I’ll update the post accordingly.
– Matt
technically, it’s called World War Beta
Today is gmail’s 5-year anniversary. Still in beta.