[clue-tech] Re: "safety" of gmail

[Nate Duehr]

Hex Star wrote:
> Oh and also...I'm sure there's more to the gmail teams reply then just 
> "Sorry, gmail is still in Beta!  See ya!"...that doesn't sound 
> professional to me at all and I highly doubt any support rep at google 
> would give someone such a reply

I don't have the exact wording, but it was publicized about two weeks 
ago on C|Net's Buzz Out Loud podcast, which in and of itself is usually 
pretty entertaining... as something fun and interesting to listen to. 
It sure beats broadcast radio!

And I'm sure the wording was NOT stated exactly that way, but the 
meaning was the same... this guy was NOT suspended... his account was 
accidentally DELETED... messages gone, no recourse.

Google's terms of use clearly state if they up and pull the plug -- your 
data's gone.  In fact, gmail is still listed as BETA software.

Taking this to the extreme leads to the following:

Right now they're highly (overly?) Capitalized and we all love them.

Will we all love them when their stock price plummets, they've added the 
much-rumored (and supposedly in Alpha) GDisk (online filesystem for your 
files), started dealing with lots of data loss issues and the pain 
involved for their techs and management, and their visionaries slowly 
start leaving the company to do new things or go enjoy their wealth?

I know that's a "doomsday scenario", but realistically Google is a 
BUSINESS.

If you don't have a contract with a business that says they're 
monetarily liable to protect your data, they can (and will) eventually 
lose your data, or someone's.  And that will be a very bad day for that 
person, because there will be absolutely nothing that they can do to get 
it back -- if they weren't keeping their own backups.

It's an exercise in basic economics... follow the money.

If there's no monetary liability for losing your data, if the data is 
lost, there's zero recourse.

This is ESPECIALLY true for a product that still clearly says it's 
"Beta" software.  (And we as "consumers" have let companies foist "Beta" 
software on us and used it for "production" level work for years now... 
there's probably no stemming that tide.)  For years almost every Cisco 
router on the backbone was running pre-release code.

That's a sad state of affairs.  But we're used to it in Open Source... 
everything is in a constant state of Beta.  :-)

Should people be trusting "Beta" software with their main mail Inbox? 
That's up to each individual to decide.

I just find the question intriguing, because so few people ask it.

Does the word "Beta" really mean anything anymore other than, "We don't 
ever want to guarantee you anything because we're too lazy to engineer a 
good solution and put our good name behind it, in writing."?

Interesting stuff!  Gotta love it.

Nate