Gmail is in beta, so Google gets less flak for outages, account lockouts, etc. "It's free and beta, so it's unsupported, take it or leave it". They have a strong position compared to other crappier webmail services.
For browsers it's reversed. Beta = "Can I really trust their browser to handle my online banking SSL connections properly?" It's the "go straight to version 2 to increase adoption" phenomenon.
Edit: Also, strategy. Gmail expands adsense footprint. Chrome is Google's attempt to compete with flash, silverlight, et al. for the future "web OS", following the rule that platforms always end up beating applications.
Gmail is in beta, so Google gets less flak for outages, account lockouts, etc. "It's free and beta, so it's unsupported, take it or leave it". They have a strong position compared to other crappier webmail services.
For browsers it's reversed. Beta = "Can I really trust their browser to handle my online banking SSL connections properly?" It's the "go straight to version 2 to increase adoption" phenomenon.
Edit: Also, strategy. Gmail expands adsense footprint. Chrome is Google's attempt to compete with flash, silverlight, et al. for the future "web OS", following the rule that platforms always end up beating applications.