On Tuesday, Google removed the "beta" tag of four high-profile Web properties, including Gmail, which had languished in beta form for over five years.

On Tuesday, Google removed the "beta" tag of four high-profile Web properties, including Gmail, which had languished in beta form for over five years.

Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Talk are all now official products, Matt Glotzbach, director of product management for Google Enterprise, said in an interview.

Google also announced that Fairchild Semiconductor is the latest high-profile business to switch over to Google Apps, bringing its 5,500 employees over from the Lotus Notes platform, Glotzbach said.

In some ways, removing the beta tag from Gmail is something akin to an apocalyptic prophecy coming true. In April 2004, Google launched the first beta of Gmail, with a then-unheard-of gigabyte limit on the number of messages that could be stored online. (The service launched to the public in Feb. 2007.) By comparison, Facebook launched two months earlier in Feb. 2004, and then expanded worldwide as a finished product in Sept. 2006.

But why Google kept all four products under the "beta" label remains something of a mystery. When asked, Glotzbach referred to "inconsistencies" across the various product teams in terms of determining milestones. "We're looking to address those," he said.

Glotzbach declined to go into specifics about what defined a beta product and what defined a "real" product, what if any milestones the company used, or the timeframe that a Google product could be expected to remain in beta. "Candidly, the criteria varies," Glotzbach said. "We haven't historically had a single consistent set of criteria. Individual teams have defined what is beta and out of beta. It's something that we're fixing."

However, Glotzbach did indicate that the "beta" tag was a turnoff for many businesses. "Make no bones about it, the concern has definitely been voiced," he said.

Some went ahead and adopted Google Apps, Glotzbach said. "Others said 'We don't like what beta represents," he added. "There was a sort of emotional barrier for enterprise adoption."

To date, 1.75 million businesses have adopted Google Apps, most of them small- and medium-business customers, Glotzbach said. Google Apps Premier Edition launched in February 2007, and includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Video and Google Sites. It costs $50 per user, per year. Perks include a guranteed 99.9 percent uptime and 25 Gbytes of storage, versus 7.3 Gbytes or so for users of the free service.

Earlier this month, Google announced a tool to , while considering .

As of tomorrow, business users will also receive three additional benefits, a Google spokeswoman said, which aren't specifically tied to the removal from beta.

First, Google will use what it calls "active-active replication," serving a live copy of the Apps data out of two separate data centers. If one goes down, the live data will continue streaming out of the other with no interruption. Second, Premier users will be able to delegate other people in a business, such as a co-worker or assistant, to access their email account and send messages on their behalf. Finally, admins will be able to set a policy that allows old email to be deleted after a set number of days.

Glotzbach did not offer any additional insights into Google Wave, which but has disappeared since then. Developers have been allowed to play in the Google Wave "sandbox", but he could not give a timeframe on when a beta version might be released.

Glotzbach also could not say whether Wave would replace Gmail or Google Docs, as had been speculated. "It's way too early to tell," he said of a possible replacement strategy.