Chrome got out of beta before GMail because Chrome has a bunch of OEM deals.  I don't know the terms of those deals, but I imagine there's money changing hands, and that they are of strategic importance both for the OEMs and for Google:<p><a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10106174-62.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10106174-62.html</a><p>There's some resistance to using auto-updating software in enterprises simply because it's not the way things have traditionally been done, but IT departments are warming up to it.  The huge pain of doing a major upgrade and the constant security fiascos that come from using software that's 5 years out of date are a major incentive for departments to switch to a model where individual changes can be canaried and tested in isolation before bringing down the whole enterprise.  Google Docs is certainly having some measure of success in the enterprise arena, despite being a webapp with this development model.  And outside of Google, Salesforce.com has revolutionized their market with a webservice-based enterprise app.