I find it really interesting how just because Google is well...Google :P and Gmail is labled as Beta.,...they get alot of attention for things like this when this could happen with any other free email provider like Hotmail.com...
.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/27/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Nate Duehr</b> <<a href="mailto:nate@natetech.com">nate@natetech.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hex Star wrote:<br>> Oh and also...I'm sure there's more to the gmail teams reply then just<br>> "Sorry, gmail is still in Beta! See ya!"...that doesn't sound<br>> professional to me at all and I highly doubt any support rep at google
<br>> would give someone such a reply<br><br>I don't have the exact wording, but it was publicized about two weeks<br>ago on C|Net's Buzz Out Loud podcast, which in and of itself is usually<br>pretty entertaining... as something fun and interesting to listen to.
<br>It sure beats broadcast radio!<br><br>And I'm sure the wording was NOT stated exactly that way, but the<br>meaning was the same... this guy was NOT suspended... his account was<br>accidentally DELETED... messages gone, no recourse.
<br><br>Google's terms of use clearly state if they up and pull the plug -- your<br>data's gone. In fact, gmail is still listed as BETA software.<br><br>Taking this to the extreme leads to the following:<br><br>Right now they're highly (overly?) Capitalized and we all love them.
<br><br>Will we all love them when their stock price plummets, they've added the<br>much-rumored (and supposedly in Alpha) GDisk (online filesystem for your<br>files), started dealing with lots of data loss issues and the pain
<br>involved for their techs and management, and their visionaries slowly<br>start leaving the company to do new things or go enjoy their wealth?<br><br>I know that's a "doomsday scenario", but realistically Google is a
<br>BUSINESS.<br><br>If you don't have a contract with a business that says they're<br>monetarily liable to protect your data, they can (and will) eventually<br>lose your data, or someone's. And that will be a very bad day for that
<br>person, because there will be absolutely nothing that they can do to get<br>it back -- if they weren't keeping their own backups.<br><br>It's an exercise in basic economics... follow the money.<br><br>If there's no monetary liability for losing your data, if the data is
<br>lost, there's zero recourse.<br><br>This is ESPECIALLY true for a product that still clearly says it's<br>"Beta" software. (And we as "consumers" have let companies foist "Beta"<br>software on us and used it for "production" level work for years now...
<br>there's probably no stemming that tide.) For years almost every Cisco<br>router on the backbone was running pre-release code.<br><br>That's a sad state of affairs. But we're used to it in Open Source...<br>everything is in a constant state of Beta. :-)
<br><br>Should people be trusting "Beta" software with their main mail Inbox?<br>That's up to each individual to decide.<br><br>I just find the question intriguing, because so few people ask it.<br><br>Does the word "Beta" really mean anything anymore other than, "We don't
<br>ever want to guarantee you anything because we're too lazy to engineer a<br>good solution and put our good name behind it, in writing."?<br><br>Interesting stuff! Gotta love it.<br><br>Nate<br><br>_______________________________________________
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