I think they should label everything in the former category "experimental". Put the label right in the logo so it is really obvious.
And of course gmail was in beta for many years.
A lot of people would have been very pissed off, even though it said 'beta'.
Them shutting it down in 2005 or 2006 would have been annoying or disappointing like the shutdown of Google Wave but understandable.
It's all about brand expectations. Google is synonymous with unreliability because they don't have another brand to shoulder that association. It used to be "Beta" but no longer.
A big problem is that nobody believes their designations anyway. GMail was in beta for years when it was obviously a mature product, while "Of course we're investing a ton in Stadia..." only to shut it down a couple months later.
Sure, go ahead. But the market will take notice if you do that.
If they had removed the beta label sooner, they might have attracted businesses to GSuite sooner?
It’s a fine line to walk: you want to iterate quickly on one hand but some users need stability on the other.
I recall a time where they were raising the limit constantly and even advertised that fact, that for most users your available space was going to increase faster than you could use it, but there was always a limit somewhere.
Is that even the standard procedure at google though? There are plenty of projects where they’ve unceremoniously pulled the plug with little notice, stadia is a glaring example (though to googles credit, they did provide some refunds)
Lying to consumers is the safer (short term) bet.
(sadly, to get official distribution, you need to be part of the "worldwide deployment" of Google products, and it's often a lie that actually menas "we deployed in many large countries except yours")
Maybe it’s important that they act like a grown up company and have some focus instead of throwing random shit up against the wall like apes in a zoo on a crack.
That's a bit of a bummer, but probably fine. Just one of those things about working at a grown up company rather than a scrappy upstart.