Google drops Gmail beta tag, plans operating system release

BEIJING， July 8 （Xinhuanet） -- Google's Gmail has finally dropped its beta tag after five years of use, the company announced Wednesday. Along with Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs, the dropping of the beta designation is seen as an effort to attract more business from those dissuaded from adopting services deemed not to be complete.

Many businesses are reluctant to have their critical infrastructure depend on software that's perpetually in beta. By ridding itself of the moniker, Google aims to convince more enterprises to consider its products as suitable for their business.

Writing on the official Google blog, the company says, "We're taking the beta label off of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk to remove any doubt that Apps is a mature product suite."

While the beta tag had been removed the company said new features would continue to be added. Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager of Google Apps, said, “we're continuing to implement additional procedures to ensure that our business customers enjoy even greater reliability: live replication of data to other locations for near-instant disaster recovery, and special handling of business users' data in our data center operations.”

The company has also announced it is to launch a new operating system in direct competition with leading software giant Microsoft. Google Chrome OS will be a development of its Chrome web browser which has so far received mixed reviews. The search giant initially aims to install the new system on small, low-cost netbooks, which are currently outselling more powerful personal computers. However， Google said that it believed the software would eventually be used on PCs as well.