And the Beta goes on...

While I am big fan of some of Google's products such as Earth and Gmail, and I am fairly certain that they probably possess one of the largest concentrations of software talent to be found anywhere on earth, I have to take issue with one contribution they have made to the world of software development, namely the 'never ending' Beta.

In my 17+ years of professional experience of software development experience I had always been led to believe that there was a simple straightforward and common sense progression in the life of a software 'release'. First you have an Alpha version where you are still flushing out a final feature list, then you release the Beta version, feature complete but still buggy. You might then follow that with RC's or Release Candidates until you have the bugs down to a sufficient point that you are happy to ship the product.

Google have screwed this all up.

A case in point, at aSmallWorld (the company I work for) earlier in the year we replaced a search feature in our busiest area (the forums) with a dedicated search engine called Sphinx. Sphinx is a great product (I cant say enough good things about Andew Aksyonoff the developer who has been a great help) but at the time it was in 'Beta'. Of course this lead to discussions about whether we should use a 'Beta' product for such a key feature of the site. That meant that I had to understand what being Beta meant for Sphinx, a question that pre-Google would never have needed to be asked.

I now use Zooomr Beta, Gmail Beta and I am writing this blog on Blogger Beta.

So my message to Google and all you Beta lovers is at some point you have to get of the metaphorical 'pot' and ship your product. Either that or redefine what Alpha means....