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Comment by cientifico | Hacker News Reader

That is not Generally available:

  Availability 
  * Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Education Standard customers 
  
  * Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and Nonprofits, as well as legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers 
  
  * Not available to users with personal Google Accounts

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At Google, generally available means it's no longer in testing. It's a development lifecycle term.

Not just at Google, MS also uses GA when something is sold, no need for it to be free.

That's weasel word marketing.

They know the majority of their users are going to think 'generally available' is exactly what it sounds like, not their made up meaning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

If a restaurant near you says their new menu is generally available, do you turn up looking for a free meal without a reservation?

The Google announcement is pretty direct about the plans the feature is included with, and how to enable it.

While the education plans aren't publicly available, apparently there is no minimum for Enterprise Plus accounts. Theoretically, an enterprising (unless nonplussed) individual could indeed get this feature at I think $30/mo.

Buy a school sounding domain, copy existing school web site -> get an education plan.

> That's weasel word marketing.

Bit of both, maybe.

Internally GA means released to at least some end users without caveats like "in beta".

Marketing are just repeating that. Maybe they are being deliberately disingenuous, or maybe they are just parroting a phrase they don't understand.

> At Google, generally available means it's a feature that about to be killed off.

;-)

Yes I think if you work at a software company "GA" as a status in release management has a well-understood meaning - "general availability." However stating something is "generally available" in the headline only to followed by the lede that states it's actually only GA for a premium tier of product users feels a bit disingenuous if not click-baity.

Generally Available in software terms means out of beta, i.e. launched.

Whether it is available to everyone for free, requires a specific plan etc. is not part of the determination.

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