I read a very interesting article at Royal Pingdom about why almost half of Google’s products are still in beta.

I’m assuming most of us reading this post have use at least 1 if not more of Google’s products. If you use Google search, then you’re one of those people.

But have you noticed how Orkut, Google Chrome, Google Docs, Google Finance and Google Video are all in beta? In fact, for those of us using Gmail, we are using a beta product.

A beta product is defined as one that is “nearly complete prototype of a product” (according to Merriam-Webster dictionary). It’s funny though, because in using these products so frequently we ignore the “beta” stamp on the logos.

When Royal Pingdom did it’s research, they found that out of 49 Google product offerings, 22 of them (45%) are still in beta. This does not include the products in Google Labs (since that section is assume to be an R&D section anyways). I didn’t even know Google had 49 products to offer.

Orkut has been online since January 2004 and are still in Beta. But have people found issues with Orkut? General feedback is that people like using it and think it’s a fully working product.

So the real question is – why still in BETA? Is Google playing safe? Are they unsure of their quality of product even after 4 years? Lack of testers at Google? =)

But here is the bit that tops it off. There are some sub-products or options in Gmail and Google Docs that people can pay for. So Google is in some way making money from these products even though they are still in Beta. So why pay for a beta product? In fact, can a company charge it’s clients to pay for a beta product?

The answer comes from a snippet of a Google reply to Networkworld.com asking them the same question:

“We have very high internal metrics our consumer products have to meet before coming out of beta. Our teams continue to work to improve these products and provide users with an even better experience.  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. Rather than the packaged, stagnant software of decades past, we’re moving to a world of regular updates and constant feature refinement where applications live in the cloud.”

Therefore, does the above mean that Google isn’t refining or working on products that are no longer ‘Beta’?

Your thoughts would be interesting to read.