Google Cloud Platform for Developers

Alpha and beta channels

The Google Cloud SDK makes both alpha and beta channels available as components within the SDK itself. These channels contain experimental versions of all the standard gcloud commands, as well as many commands and components that are entirely unavailable in the mainstream release. This is usually the case with commands for products and services that are themselves in alpha or beta release.

Google often implements very long beta windows before releasing new products and features as generally available. This is good in that generally available products and features are more well-tested and feature-complete. The flip side of this is that many teams will forego the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and quality guarantee of ...