Larry CannellThere are probably not too many of us surprised by Google’s decision to drop Wave (perhaps its demise was a little quicker than we thought). However, I liked how Wave’s designers pushed the envelope with the technology (in terms of mixing styles of collaborative interaction and in terms of their intended scope of use) but Wave was radically unfamiliar to most people. Therefore, most struggled to find scenarios in which to apply it. In the end, I think Lars Rasumussen was wrong when he said “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.” No, it would probably look like…well, mail.
So, great technology, but no obvious use cases. I feel for those people who bought into the vision and dedicated significant amounts of their time trying to make it happen. Let’s hope remnants of the project (perhaps the Wave Federation Protocol) live on and come back to benefit us some time in the future.
“despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product”
Official Google Blog: Update on Google Wave
Previous posts about Wave that may also be of interest:
- Google Wave and its Audacity of Scope (June 2009) – “Google is telling us it aspires to make Google Wave as pervasive as e-mail. However, realizing these aspirations is a long-shot. To have any hope of making it happen Google needs a strong extended-release dose of determination, flexibility, credibility, and lots of luck.” (their determination lasted a little over a year)
- Does Google Have Enough Patience For Wave? (November 2009)- “Last week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference I attended both the Google Wave keynote and break-out sessions (the keynote on the main stage was a shortened version of the full break-out)…Unfortunately, my sense was that attendees were generally underwhelmed. I left the session thinking that Wave’s honeymoon with the public may be just about over.” (It turns out the Enterprise 2.0 Conference marked the height of Wave’s popularity, after the initial announcement, as illustrated by this Google search timeline).
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
2 responses so far ↓
1 Mark Richards August 5, 2010 at 9:29 am
Larry,
I think the mistake people are making is to view the front end of Wave as the be all and end all.
There are some very interesting applications being developed using the wave protocol – that really don’t bear a huge resemblance to google’s own implementation of wave. The real clever stuff is in the back end server.
Here’s an example of a proof of concept that uses the wave protocol but a different implementation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3oEhEOY6wQ
Regards
Mark
2 voer August 10, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Well, Google Wave is not only technological great. The problem is that it was too technological. The idea is superb and will find its way far beyond social media. But what a laugh of an approach by Google, it is clear this company lacks maturity in go-to-market. This project was given in the hands of technical people to bring it on the market – never let technical people do that – golden rule, but Google did it!! The interface sucked – too complex and most important some say their are no use cases and added value. That is not correct, the value is there but if you can’t get to it in a low effort way you can forget your beautiful product. When you wanted to use it: you had to have someone else in your relationships that wants to use it too, that combined with the too complex interface (takes to much time to get yourself comfortable with) makes the gap to unlock the added value to big. If there was a redo > make interface simple and intuitive > make sure that automatically all relationships are imported in one go > make sure that a stupid user can start with it in less than 30 min.
It is a dammed shame : so much intellectual capital and not able to bring it to live !! But be sure others will.