Guess what, internoodle? Google Apps is officially out of beta. Do you know what that means? It means that Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and Talk are losing that "beta" signage / language you've come to know and loathe. It also seems to mean that Google will be taking a much more direct and serious approach to courting businesses for its Apps suite. At first blush, it looks like the company has all but squashed the "Standard Edition" free hosted Apps package that many now use, though that isn't the case (yet). We say "all but" because while it
looks like the pro bono package has been zapped out of existence by the magic raygun of capitalism, a tiny link to the service still exists on an arcane page
buried deep in the casefiles of one T. Google Merryweather III. Or just Google. To be completely clear, however, regular old Gmail will
still be freely available to anyone and everyone who wants a crack at it. At any rate, you'll be happy to know that the beta tag will be scuttled later today, and you can start getting righteously mad at Google for not taking care of their proper, released products immediately. Now maybe they can get to coding up nice native versions of Gmail for the iPhone and webOS... eh?
Update: The folks at Google, bless 'em, have
posted a quick note on their blog stating explicitly that the Standard version of Apps isn't going anywhere. In their words, "We have no intention of eliminating Standard Edition, and we apologize for any confusion." Nice!
posted July 7th 2009 11:47AM
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they are saying that you suck at clear writing... lol ;)
Made sense to me. I'd recommend a course in reading comprehension.
I want my freakin SMS back!
Yes! Thank you! I went to SMS the other day and it wasn't freaking there! Google - listen to this guy and bring back SMS.
I think this was a necessity for them since they've started pushing Google Apps for enterprise in earnest lately. My company makes a product that migrates end user mail from Lotus Domino to Google Apps, and I can tell you that service certainly isn't free. I don't think they wanted to give their paying clients a reason to doubt they were serious about their webmail support. If you're going to do something like compete with Microsoft in the "cloud", you're going to have to do some serious marketing and convince customers you can handle their data... oh yeah, and that what they're paying for isn't "beta".
So obnoxious amounts of ad revenue wasn't enough for you, eh Google.
Ok so it's out of Beta and they wanna court business users? Ok then lets get support for IMAP on Blackberry Google! You support the iPhone and Android (well Android being your own OS of course) but still
Lies, lies I tell you! Go to the page and click on Google Apps for non-profits, and it's all still there, and it's all still free. And, no, you don't have to be a registered non-profit. It says it's for families and clubs!
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/org/index.html
Arse, I pasted the wrong link! It's this one:
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html#utm_medium=blog&utm_source=us-en-ogb-oob0707&utm_campaign=oob
Click non-profits there and it takes you to the "hidden" page.
I'd love for the calendar to start sending reminders to me again. Unfortunately I'm not the only one having this problem. Now that Google Calendar isn't a beta program anymore I hope Google pays more than zero attention to their help forums and maybe even adds a way to contact a person or bot to send me a canned message telling me to blow.
Anyone know how much longer Standard apps will be free?
Are they going to begin charging "standard" (i.e. FREE) Google Apps users?? Say it isn't so!!
Missed it by thaaaaaaaaat much.
I'd like to see Google's app suite come to Google App users. Like Youtube, Google Reader, etc. As it stands you have to create a standard google account to access these services. It'd be nice if my Google Apps account had access to these from the top of the page.
I don't think they're canning the standard edition at all, Engadget. Go to google.com/apps. The two main people Apps is pointed at are now businesses and EDU, duh. But look below that - "Not an IT manager?" Those two links lead you to the free edition. They're not doing away with free Apps (especially since all it is is their normal web apps with a bundled control panel), just re-branding it.
Yay?
So...
Push gmail for the iPhone (and everything else) now?
That'd be nice.
I'm doing the whole forward all incomming Gmail to a Yahoo address in lieu of Gmail push.
I don't care at all about coding native apps for webOS and iPhone, I just want push!
On another note, I do have the pro hosted version of apps, and am quite happy with the integrationwith all my devices, syncing, and even push for contacts and calendars. Why can't they enable push on email, where it's the most useful for the most people?
I just want wave. Please made wave a public beta...pretty please.
I hope to god that GMail doesn't become a subscription service. I can't be dealing with these non-online things like Mail and Outlook, and Hotmail sucks complete arse.
Good!
my google docs are still in beta
Does this now mean we're more likely to get Push/Exchange for Gmail rather than POP&IMAP?
'waves'
but you can still have that beta label back! (check lab)
as for free apps, it's still there - they just made it less obvious
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html
It's about time!!!!!!!!
test
if google coded a native gmail application for the iphone, apple would reject it because they do not include applications which compete with their own default apps.
"Regular old Gmail will still be freely available."
What about Docs? I love Docs.
Agreed, I actually have quite a few shared Docs for school.... hope they don't suddenly make people pay to get to them...
I'm suddenly not interested anymore.
As far as I can tell they got rid of the ability (Under labs) to put your labels on the right! Screw you Google! >:( I don't want all this junk cluttering up the left even if it does fold down its still in the way. Not cool.
This certainly is pretty confusing
I am not sure where they are getting that the free version is going away. I have it and have several clients on it, so if there is someplace where google implies the standard version will go away or not be free I would like to know about it. I do not see that anywhere, though. I have been, though, thinking about moving to the premier edition for the extra features.
That beta tag has been gone from my GMail logo for a while...Though I'm using a theme so I'm sure that has something to do with it. Go Google!
WinMo 6 Gmail native gmail client would rock too.
Hey Joshua,
This article needs to be updated, man. http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-standard-edition-still-free.html
It's still free, they just "accidentally" dropped off the link off of the main enterprise page. Weird how such a big product gets dropped accidentally, but hey. There it is, straight from the horse's mouth.
Good News... Standard Edition is still free,
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-standard-edition-still-free.html
Finally :D :D
Thank you Google
I love you guys.
Now if Google will only offer a folders option in Gmail.
Wish Partly Granted. They made the labels more folder-like with with drag and drop. Need more depth? Then you still need to cheat with the naming:
comments:Engadget
comments:Gizmodo
for folder nesting
comments
Engadget
Gizmodo
What does this have to do with gadgets? If you're going to post Google news, you might as well also post AOL, Windows Live, and Yahoo! news too.
5 years and still NO folders in Gmail!
And don't give me that 'labels' shite
How are labels so fundamentally different from folders? I've always wondered that when people complain about it.
"How are labels so fundamentally different from folders? I've always wondered that when people complain about it."
Because folders mimic how we organize and store things in real life: we have cupboards, drawers, boxes, file folders, compartments, etc., in our homes, offices, and cars. It makes locating what you want quicker and easier.
Example: What would be easier to deal with? To have little items (emails) inside bigger boxes (folders) that are labeled and neatly stacked inside a room (inbox)? Or to bypass the boxes altogether and instead, walk into a room to see all those little items scattered all over the place with a sticky note (label) attached to each one? And what's quicker? Dragging and dropping an email into a folder, or taking the time to type out a label for the hundred emails you get each day?
Whether physical or virtual, folders just make sense. To me, only offering labels/tags is stupid and a time-waster. But the truth is, Google could offer both. Then we'd have the best of both worlds and use either or both depending on what made sense to us.
We need to have the choice. Every program offers folders, including Outlook. Every public email system offers folders. Shoot, our freaking OS's offer folders to organize things! Except for Google - DOH!
I treat my labels as folders. When I label a message, I remove it from the inbox and it appears only when I "open" that specific label.
The difference here is that I can assign multiple labels to a message without making multiple copies of that message and putting into the corresponding folders. It really is just symantics.
VLC is at 1.0 today, as well...
if you want the Beta on your masthead, you can turn on the Labs feature and go back to seeing gmail in beta...
the guy at www.npdinsight.com says - Gmail gets out of beta after Google introduced "show-stopper" feature - which is back to beta.... lol....