Google apps drop beta tag

For five years now, Gmail has been in beta. In fact, almost all of Google’s projects seem to be in perpetual beta. But today Google announced that Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk—both enterprise and consumer versions—will no longer have the beta tag attached to them! Awesome!

Now, it’s cool that Google Apps have grown up and all. It’s wonderful that these products are now super reliable. And now businesses won’t shy away from Google Apps when considering enterprise software. But really? Only after five whole years does Google decide to bring Gmail out of beta. Apparently Google has no idea what the word beta means. Or they just like breaking the rules.

Oh, and by the way, if you’ve grown kind of attached to the beta tag over the years, Google has added a setting you can toggle in Gmail Labs to turn it back on. Isn’t that sweet?

[via The Official Google Blog and other sources]