Google Docs: A beta product with some alpha features

Google is famous for keeping the beta label on their products for a while as they learn and mature their offerings. Over the past year, I’ve become a regular and satisfied user of Google Docs, but just as with Word, I probably only use 5% of the features most of the time.

Earlier this week, I for the first time took a look at the “Find and Replace” feature and saw the below screen:

Please note the preliminary features notes!

For me, this was a helpful reminder, that while Google Docs is a perfectly satisfactory for most of my daily needs, it is still lacking in many of the more advanced features that might be expected in an enterprise setting. Because the product is free of charge, my expectations are low, and so I’m actually not that disappointed when I am faced with interesting notes like this.

Last month I commented that Google Docs captures the essence of wikis. If you have any experiences with Google Docs or other enterprise offerings from Google and are interested in sharing, I am still looking for input for our new CMS Watch evaluation report on Google in the Enterprise.

Finally, we are hosting an event on January 28th in London, where you can learn from some of the early adopters of Google’s enterprise offering: The Guardian and WWF will be present and share their experiences. See our Afternoon Seminar on Google in the Enterprise and sign up directly online.

NB: Interestingly, the beta label was recently removed from Google Chrome: the much hyped browser from Google. Do you know why Google was so quick to remove the beta label?

UPDATE Mar 24, 2009: Google just announced “A new ‘Find and replace‘”