Google’s new ‘Beta’: Electronic Funds Transfer

Products,Search by on April 25, 2005 at 1:11 pm
I’m fed up with Google’s overuse of the ‘Beta’ classification for nearly all of its products.

AdSense publishers may have recently noticed that Google now offers Electronic Funds Transfers (EFT) instead of monthly checks. This functionality is certainly a welcome addition and clearly a good idea for both Google and for publishers.

The new option was released to all publishers (AFIK). However, this is what the publisher is greeted with:



OK, Beta products are a necessary component of any product launch. Bugs need to be ironed out. Broader beta tests are also needed for ground-breaking cutting edge products (which EFT is certainly not).

However, anything that involves transfers of significant funds should NEVER be made Generally Available (GA), unless it is bulletproof. Can you imagine any halfway reputable bank or online trading firm offering ‘beta’ payments?

It is quite simple: if a product is ready to be made GA, then launch it and identify it as such. If a product isn’t ready, don’t launch it. This is doubly true for anything that involves transactions.

Am I missing something?

0 Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. | Dave Naffziger's BlogDave & Iva Naffziger