Google Apps finally exit beta

Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk

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7 July 2009 16:34 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Google has announced that its application suite, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Talk are all exiting beta, ending a running joke among users that they'd never migrate to full services.

Gmail in particular has "worn the beta tag", as Google puts it, for more than 5 years, despite being feature-complete for a very long time. The company says that the logos of the products will immediately have "beta" removed from them.

Google adds: "We'll continue to innovate and improve upon the applications whether or not there's a small "beta" beneath the logo. We've come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn't fit for large enterprises that aren't keen to run their business on software that sounds like it's still in the trial phase".

Oh, and if you're feeling naked now that there's no more "beta" logo on your Gmail then don't worry - Google's added the option to re-enable it from the labs tab under "settings". Who says big multinational companies don't have a sense of humour?

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