Am I alone, or is everyone really getting tired of the whole “its in beta” culture that seems to pervade the software industry today?

Some days I look at my Gmail mailbox and I see that word beta on the bottom of the logo, and I wonder how on Earth Google can still call something that has been released and in use for 4 or more years a beta application. The same applies to the younger but equally important Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Docs. All have the word “Beta” at the bottom right hand corner below their logo.

Yet these are the applications that power the core services of Google Apps. The application suite that is supposed to be Google’s offering to compete with what used to be known as the Microsoft BackOffice Server suite of products.

Then I finish checking my email and I look at Google Reader to try and catch up on the mountain of feeds I have waiting for me, only to notice that a relatively new product (when compared with Gmail) does not have the word “Beta” in its logo, yet is considerably newer than Gmail. Nor is it part of the Google Apps suite.

In the case of Gmail, it should have been declared a released product the moment they went over a 10,000 active, legitimate daily users. I’d call that a fairly good demarcation point that the product is ready for a .0 release.

Its not just Google that does it. Its starting to become the culture of the “Web 2.0″ generation. Never release a full product, always call it a beta and chip away at it.

I have no problem with people constantly chipping away at their products and improving them. Especially web based applications. But at some point you have to set a line in the sand and admit that its an actual released product. In the case of Gmail, we’re on to the second public version of the product. Google Reader is also onto its second release with lots of features added since that release. I remember Google reader when it was just a rolling road of posts and you could read a post, star it and that was really about all.

For me, Google is starting to lose its shine. I’ll never stop using their products. The majority of my online life is now inextricably wrapped up in their services. Many tens of thousands of emails over many years now live in my Gmail account. My events are planned using Google Calendar. Several of my domains are currently parked using Google Apps. I live on Google’s services.

But please… Can we stop with the beta software and just admit that this is the line in the sand and we’ll call this release or a .0 version and carry on adding to it as always? Get rid of the beta for any product that has been in general use for more than a year, especially if it has more than a few thousand users.

Hell, there are companies with only a few hundred users that have quite a few full releases behind them. Why is it so difficult for others?