Google Mail Is Finally Out Of Beta!
Written by Simon Barker on July 7, 2009 · Filed under Internet, Tech
Ever since Google released its webmail service; Google Mail over 5 years ago it’s still been in beta for the entire time, in fact it had become somewhat of an ongoing joke in certain sections of the tech-world that Google Mail was still ‘technically’ in development and had not officially been released as a finished product or service.
Well it looks as though Google now finally believe that they’ve developed it to such a point whereby they can tear off that beta tag from the logo and continue to develop it as a proper live service (the service already provides more features than any other webmail service including Google Mail Themes and Google Mail Voice and Video Chat) – perhaps they’re hoping to gain more market share from the other big webmail systems such as Hotmail and Yahoo – has that dastardly beta tag been putting off huge numbers of potential users?
Personally, I doubt it very much as everyone I know who uses it has been treating it as a robust service already – with many people, including myself, using it for their business emails. Perhaps larger corporate customers might be open to using it now including opting for the Google Apps paid-package options? – Although, recently Virgin Media customers started using Google Mail for their ISP-based email addresses regardless of the beta status.
Gmail wasn’t alone in being released from beta in this announcement, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk are all now ready to be used…in a sense – so if you haven’t already used them, head on over to Google and get playing with their new non-beta services.
Oh one more thing – if you worried you’ll now miss that little beta tag on the Google Mail logo – Google have provided an option under the Google Mail Labs settings to re-enable it – how very thoughtful of them! 
Via – Google Blog
I never thought I’d see the day when they’d come out of beta. Man, that’s a long time. Truthfully, I always thought they were beta in name only as they’ve always done a great job enhancing their service.
It’s certainly a milestone isn’t it Mark – what with this coming out of beta and Duke Nukem Forever being abondaned, now we’ll have to find another example for long-running jokes!