File this under "Whoa!" Today, Google announced that it is removing the "beta" label from its core productivity applications, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk.Well, this is a surprise. Gmail has been in beta for over five years. Why take it out of beta all of a sudden?

Matthew Glotzbach, Director, Product Management, Google Enterprise, explains, "We've come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn't fit for large enterprises that aren't keen to run their business on software that sounds like it's still in the trial phase. So we've focused our efforts on reaching our high bar for taking products out of beta, and all the applications in the Apps suite have now met that mark."

So does that mean we're now all using Gmail 1.0? Will new features be rolled out in 1.x releases? Glotzbach is sure to mention that Google will continue to add features and make tweaks to its core products. It recognizes that not all of its products are perfect and offer all that both consumers and enterprise customers could wish for, but they are good enough for now.

Google is also launching some new services for Google Apps. Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps, writes, "We're launching a tool that will be particularly useful to administrative support staff to screen and send email on behalf of others -- a feature called email delegation. And to help customers comply with regulations that may exist specific to their industry, we're adding email retention so that IT administrators can set up policies to determine when email will be purged."

Google is also setting up a new data replication service for its business customers. It says the new capability will aid in faster recovery times in case of a meltdown.

According to Google, more than 1.75 million companies run their businesses on Google Apps.

(If you really, really want to, Google will let you re-insert the "Beta" icon under Gmail via Gmail Labs.)