Why Gmail is Still in Beta
Posted in: Google, Today's ChiliThis article was written on December 07, 2007 by CyberNet.
On multiple times, I, like many of you, have asked “why on Earth is Gmail still in beta?” It’s been around for over three years now, don’t you think it’s about time? I thought it was, but now I’m starting to understand why Gmail is still in beta. There are numerous people over at the Gmail Help Discussion Group reporting that when they try to login to their Gmail account, they get an error message saying that their account has been disabled. As you can imagine, the people who are receiving these error messages are frustrated and can do nothing but sit and wait for for Google to determine a problem and hopefully get their accounts up and running without the loss of any data.
Over at the Google Group, some of the users are a little frantic because they’ve got “eBay stuff that is going to bounce back” or one person is applying for jobs and is expecting replies to setup interviews. The problem is, not only is the account simply not working, but anyone who sends a message to a disabled account gets the message sent back to them. These users won’t know who tried to contact them, and what messages they missed. Other users are reporting that emails they sent in the time shortly before their accounts were disabled aren’t being received on the other end. As one person said “this is completely unacceptable” and I have to agree.
The Gmail Help Center isn’t of much help to these users either. Under the “account disabled” section, it explains that “In most cases, Gmail accounts are disabled because of a perceived violation of Gmail Terms of Use. Google reserves the right to suspend a Gmail account or the entire Google Account if Gmail Terms of Use are violated. Google also has the right to terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.” When users find no help in the help center, some of tried to contact Google over the phone, but without luck.
It appears the current batch of accounts that were disabled fall under that last line where Google explains they can do this for any reason and without notice because I’m extremely doubtful that hundreds of people violated the Gmail terms of use. The first person reported a problem on December 5th which means we’re going on two days without a fix. That seems like a long time for Google to not publicly address the situation and let users know what’s going on.
Wasn’t it about this time last year that Gmail was making emails disappear? It sure was! Looking back at all of the other Gmail Outages that have caused frustration, I think we can answer the question of why Gmail is still in beta…
Source: Mashable
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