At a time when banks are shedding IT roles by the dozen, it seems counter-intuitive that 83 per cent of the nation’s chief information officers should report they are confident about the future of their business to the extent that 45 per cent expect to hire IT staff in the first six months of the year. The question remains – is this a dead cat bounce?
Go Google the search giants product base and you will discover, even if you discount the experimental labs stuff, that nearly half of everything it produces is still in beta. That includes Gmail which has remained a beta product for 4 years! What possible reason could there be for this?
A beta product is, by definition, one that is a prototype, one that is
nearly complete, one that isn't quite ready for the big time. Or, at
least, that is the definition that most people would apply to the term.
But not, it seems, Google.
After all, if Gmail was nearly complete when it
was released as a beta product way back in April 2004, surely it would
have been finished by now? Some thought it was coming out of beta last
year when a host of improvements were announced, but no.
Google is always proud to boast of how it attracts the best developers
on the planet, yet they cannot actually complete a major project some
four years after the beta came out.
The alternative viewpoint would be, of course, that because it is a
beta product then Gmail is not quite ready for the big time, it is not
a finished product at all. Yet if that is the case then why have it
right up there as a major part of your product portfolio?
But it is not just Gmail, one reporter dug deep into the Google product
line and discovered
that of the 49 available a stonking 22, or 45 percent, were still in
beta.
That is without counting the stuff that can be found in the Google
Labs, which you might argue are either the real beta products or almost
by definition the Google alpha line. Roll those into the statistics and
the number rises to 57 percent.
While I can understand the likes of Chrome being in beta, you really
do have to dig into the depths of reason to come up with any logical
argument for Gmail or Orkut still to remain as such. Orkut, for the
record, is an even older beta that Gmail by a couple of months.
Google itself has argued that "We believe beta
has a different meaning when applied to applications on the Web, where
people expect continual improvements in a product. On the Web, you
don't have to wait for the next version to be on the shelf or an update
to become available. Improvements are rolled out as they're developed."
Which kind of suggests that what Google has done here is give itself a
liability get out clause, passing the responsibility buck when things
go pear shaped. After all, when a security hole appears in a product it
is a to be expected bit of beta development updating rather than a
serious bug fix in a finished application.
If Gmail goes down, if Gmail swallows your archive, if Gmail screws up
big time then guess what? It ain't a Google problem, in fact you are
the jerk for using a beta product to handle important stuff.
Can you see the logic here?
If you can think of a better reason why the mighty Google cannot, it
seems, finish products in a reasonable timeframe, then do please let us
know.
Michelle Thomas
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