When Google Products will recover from BETA ?

After reaching office, you may be checking your mails on gmail (most users have gmail account), or using some other Google product, just check the Google product logo on Top of the page, small beta text will be written just below the logo. Most of the Google products are still in their BETA version. Beta tag is now becoming part of Google product logos. Since its launch in April 2004, GMAIL is still in beta version irrespective of having 146 m global users (Comscore, April 2009). Almost half of the Google products are still not grown up and running in beta version.

I was trying to count down Google Beta products but someone else has down this work for him. Pingdom's count (Sep 08 report) reveals that almost half of the Google's products are running with beta logo. No other big internet giant is doing this to the extent that Google does.

Generally, beta label is used for the products that are not fully tested or that still lack important functionality or not fully baked product. I assume, Google is redefining the word “Beta” for itself. By releasing products in beta version, Google is playing safe and limit its liability with certain products. For example, you are using Gmail and move your all the important contacts and mails into it then due to some technical reason, many of your e-mail / contacts disappears. Then to whom you would blame? Google has protective shield named Beta label.

Recently, Google took out Chrome from its beta version. But still four of the five core Google products are still in Beta i.e., Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk and Google Calendar and Google Sites.

Now, news is coming from Google house that they are planning to remove beta label from its products which are for enterprise customers. They may remove Beta label from its number of products which are aimed at enterprise customers and to even consider shifting from MS Office to Google.

Google is earning million dollar money through beta label products. Amazon is also doing the same thing; its Mechanical Turk has been in beta for 3 years. When these companies will make fully functional product and stop making fool to users.

Who’s making maximum profit per head count?

Have you ever imagined how much money companies use to make per head count. Let’s analyze what kind of money the well known global tech companies are making such as Apple, HP, IBM, eBay, Dell, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft etc., in total we will analyze 15 companies. These companies have sheer size of workforces.

Some interesting facts about the employee size:

• IBM head count is around 400k. Its employee strength is more than total workforce of Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Cisco, pple, Amazon and Google.


• HP employees are more than four times the employees of Dell.


• Amazon stands almost parallel to Google in terms of workforce count.
Microsoft employee size is three times the strength of Apple.

Analyze profit and revenue per employee

General perception is that larger the company, larger the overhead and costs. But tech companies are breaking this perception by earning more and more profit per employee.

Refer the table below for deep understanding:

Revenue and profit per employee in 2008 (in USD)
Company	Employees	Revenue per employee	Profit per employee
Google	20,164	1,080,914	209,624
Microsoft	91,000	663,956	194,297
Baidu	6,397	499,961	163,844
Apple	32,000	1,014,969	151,063
Cisco	66,129	597,922	121,762
Adobe	7,335	488,056	118,856
eBay	16,200	527,238	109,844
Intel	82,500	455,588	64,145
Oracle	86,657	258,837	63,711
Dell	76,500	798,706	32,392
Amazon	20,600	930,388	31,311
Yahoo	13,600	530,037	31,199
IBM	398,455	260,080	30,957
HP	321,000	368,735	25,947
Sun	33,556	413,637	12,010

Some more interesting facts

Google is clear winner by making maximum profit per employee than the other tech companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and Intel. HP and IBM in spite of sheer employee size making relatively low profit per employee. Microsoft is doing great job and very closes to Google irrespective of having 4.5 times as many employees.

Let’s simplify the above table

• IBM, Yahoo, Amazon and Dell have over $30k profit per employee
• Oracle and Intel’s profit margin is more than $64k
• Adobe and Cisco have around $120k

I’m not a financial analyst or HR research person but this makes me feel that Google is working very strategically by making good balance between profit and employee. Above figures may change soon as most of the companies are saying TATA – BYE BYE to their employees by giving pink slips.

Companies included in the survey are publicly traded on NYSE/NASDAQ. Although Sun was recently bought by Oracle.