After more than five years officially in testing mode, Gmail is finally graduating from beta.
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Google Inc. says its e-mail service and three other applications in the Google Apps suite for businesses are now finished products in name as well as function.
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But that doesn’t mean Google is finished improving upon them. Nor were the extra features announced Tuesday cause for dropping the label.
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In fact, getting rid of beta doesn’t mean a whole lot.
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So why drop it?
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Google concedes the move is aimed more at wooing business customers than marking any real developmental milestone.
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The premier edition Apps suite sells for $50 per user to business customers, who get added features including offline access and 24/7 customer support. The beta label was scaring businesses off.
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Many of the companies that have looked in depth at the apps have seen that they are feature complete, Rajen Sheth, a Google senior product manager, said in an interview. But there is a kind of perception thing, and in many cases that stops companies in their tracks from even looking at it.
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Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk are now out of beta mode. Google Sites and Google Video have already dropped the label.
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Other Google applications not included in Apps suite — such as Google Scholars — will still carry the tag.
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Nostalgic Gmail users will even have the option to restore the beta tag on their own screens.
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The Mountain View, Calif. company announced two new Gmail features it will roll out to premier business customers over the next few weeks. One allows administrative assistants to send e-mail on others’ behalf, while the other lets companies automatically purge old e-mails after a certain period of time.
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Google also said it will begin storing business-grade e-mails at two data centers simultaneously, reducing the likelihood of downtime.
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The company says it has about 1.75…