Perhaps Google Calculator is still in Beta too?

Alright, I'm not going to be honest and say that I can't really imagine working with numbers that large, but honestly Google's answer seems to be a bit off the mark...

Perhaps Google Calculator is still in beta? My fear is that if Google can't answer what appears to be a very straight forward question, can we really trust any answer it gives us? I'm sure there's some answer buried in talk of algorithms and large numbers and string theory that will explain this situation... even it it won't make sense.


Speaking of Beta, though, it seems someone else has noticed that almost half of Google's products are still in Beta. I've mentioned it before, that it seems everything Google is still beta, but obviously I don't have the pull to get a response from Google. At least, I never really tried, simply expecting that I wouldn't ever get a response. This guy did get a response, though:

"We have very high internal metrics our consumer products have to meet before coming out of beta. Our teams continue to work to improve these products and provide users with an even better experience. We believe beta has a different meaning when applied to applications on the Web, where people expect continual improvements in a product. On the Web, you don't have to wait for the next version to be on the shelf or an update to become available. Improvements are rolled out as they're developed. Rather than the packaged, stagnant software of decades past, we're moving to a world of regular updates and constant feature refinement where applications live in the cloud."

So, according to the spokesman, they have very high internal metrics to measure their products, and applications on the web are different than traditional software...

What I have to wonder about here is Gmail, which has been in Beta for 4 years now. High internal metrics or not, there's really no excuse for it at this point. There's not been a new feature added, or any noticeable change or improvement for about a year. Perhaps I've been lucky, perhaps there are many issues going on that they are fixing, problems other people are having, that I am not.

Still, it seems like they could the Beta tag off before they reach an entire presidential term...

Certainly, some of their products deserve a beta label (Chrome, anything from Labs, Knol, etc.), but Orkut, Gmail, Docs, and the like really need to be set free of their beta shackles.