[londons_explore]

They really just need clear branding between "This is a side project, we might take it away with just a months notice" and "This is a product we will give you many years notice and a migration path if we decide to get rid of it".

I think they should label everything in the former category "experimental". Put the label right in the logo so it is really obvious.

[prepend]

They used to have “google labs” but stopped it (haha) with some stupid explanation that it wasn’t needed any more because everything is a lab, or something like that.

And of course gmail was in beta for many years.

[lolinder]

I honestly think that a lot of these side projects should be released under a different brand name. Kind of like how GM has different brands for their luxury cars, or Disney had Touchstone Pictures for their less-child-friendly movies. If a project is one employee's 20% time or one manager's promotion project, it should be released under a different brand name. It can always be rebranded if it becomes an actual business priority.

[ajsnigrutin]

They could just use some google name that clearly implies it's not a "main" (long-term) product, eg. "Google Labs", "Google Beta", etc. too, so you clearly know that it's a "toy" that might not exist anymore very soon. If they use eg. "Aviato" brand for some new product, people will expect more... and then get burned.. again.

[arcbyte]

They used to do public betas. I remember Gmail being labeled beta in the early days.

[amenghra]

Gmail was in beta for 5 years, from 2004 until 2009 — imho it didn’t make much sense to label something as beta when it is used by ~1B people.

[kmlx]

i think it's about expectations

[londons_explore]

Thing is... imagine they had announced "Thanks for being part of the gmail beta. We learnt a lot, but have now decided to close GMail. You have 3 days to download your emails and find a new email provider".

A lot of people would have been very pissed off, even though it said 'beta'.

[arcbyte]

As I remember, it would have been very odd for them to do that in 2008 or 2009 when it was so immensley popular. But that was 4 or 5 year into it's life, well beyond the typical lifetime of Googles products.

Them shutting it down in 2005 or 2006 would have been annoying or disappointing like the shutdown of Google Wave but understandable.

It's all about brand expectations. Google is synonymous with unreliability because they don't have another brand to shoulder that association. It used to be "Beta" but no longer.

[hn_throwaway_99]

The point is that their "release stage" marking was always fantasy land. Yes, I would be pissed if they had shut down GMail after 4 years, regardless of whether it was marked "Beta", because by that point it had a ton of users and clearly a ton of investment.

A big problem is that nobody believes their designations anyway. GMail was in beta for years when it was obviously a mature product, while "Of course we're investing a ton in Stadia..." only to shut it down a couple months later.

[cptaj]

I think its about copping out of any responsibility.

Sure, go ahead. But the market will take notice if you do that.

[amenghra]

It’s impossible to go back in time and tell, but I bet lots of companies were opting for Microsoft Exchange/Web Outlook around 2007-2008, because Gmail was advertised as beta.

If they had removed the beta label sooner, they might have attracted businesses to GSuite sooner?

It’s a fine line to walk: you want to iterate quickly on one hand but some users need stability on the other.

[kmlx]

right, that too. but i prefer the honesty of having the “beta” label than the lack of it.

[voytec]

Yeah, with unlimited storage for life. Acquiring userbase with empty promises is their M.O.

[wolrah]

When was Gmail ever sold as unlimited? When it came out the big deal was that it offered 1GB, which absolutely destroyed the 5-10MB most free providers were offering at the time.

I recall a time where they were raising the limit constantly and even advertised that fact, that for most users your available space was going to increase faster than you could use it, but there was always a limit somewhere.

[voytec]

Wasn't it marketed as unlimited during invite-only beta?

[lolinder]

No, 1GB was the starting point and was considered insane at the time. Then they eventually added a counter where the storage space grew all the time. They finally capped that out—maybe that's what you're thinking of?

[voytec]

My bad. I misremembered.

[thfuran]

Wasn't it originally 1 GB? Then they doubled it on April fools one year and started increasing it from there.

[ssdspoimdsjvv]

It even had a counter that was continuously incrementing (at the end by an incredibly low rate, but still)

[ortusdux]

When Gmail finally left beta after 4+ years it had well over 100m users. Some argued that the beta label slowed early adoption, while others felt that it allowed more leniency with regards to problems and downtime. I could see members of the first group have a lingering desire to avoid new products getting stuck in beta.

[comte7092]

> "This is a product we will give you many years notice and a migration path if we decide to get rid of it".

Is that even the standard procedure at google though? There are plenty of projects where they’ve unceremoniously pulled the plug with little notice, stadia is a glaring example (though to googles credit, they did provide some refunds)

[bogwog]

Why would I invest in games/hardware for Stadia if Google themselves admit that it might get shutdown at anytime?

Lying to consumers is the safer (short term) bet.

[rvnx]

They did something nice, instead of leaving the users with a brick, they refunded all users who bought Stadia products through official channels.

(sadly, to get official distribution, you need to be part of the "worldwide deployment" of Google products, and it's often a lie that actually menas "we deployed in many large countries except yours")

[camdenreslink]

Stadia presumably would not have the experimental label because it was such a large investment.

[scarface74]

That won’t help. How is the general audience suppose to know the difference between “experimental” and “beta”?

Maybe it’s important that they act like a grown up company and have some focus instead of throwing random shit up against the wall like apes in a zoo on a crack.

[sanderjd]

Yeah but what will actually happen (has already happened) is just a lot fewer (to none) experimental projects.

That's a bit of a bummer, but probably fine. Just one of those things about working at a grown up company rather than a scrappy upstart.

[agentdrtran]

they did this alrady with Tables, they labeled it an area120 project. they really need to do this for more stuff

https://tables.area120.google.com/u/0/about