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Google Kills Wave

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Re: Google Kills Wave

#141

Post by nl »

amackera wrote: post #103
Zak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Google saw that artificial scarcity worked well with gmail and thought the same would be true for Wave. The problem, of course is that a Gmail account didn't depend on anyone else having one to be useful. Wave, in theory was an open standard as well, but in practice, Google was and is the only provider.

I think more a more likely explanation is that they lacked the infrastructure to roll it out effectively. If that's the case then they should have just waited until they could deliver. It's pure conjecture of course!

It wasn't so much that they lacked infrastructure as that the early versions didn't scale so well.

I got a very early invitation, and it was pretty slow, and got worse as they added more users. They fixed that of course, but it did slow down the roll-out.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#142

Post by nl »

callahad wrote: post #106
pgbovine wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who as I understand it, sold AppJet to Google to work on Google Wave somehow i don't think they need your sympathies ... they probably got a decent amount of money from their acquisition, so they're probably not crying right now ;)

Can money replace seeing your vision for realtime collaboration die twice? I'm sure they're not hurting, but if they were building the technology because they believed it could transform the way we interact with each other for the better... Well, that still has to sting.

The Etherpad guys originally tried to build a platform (AppJet). Then etherpad took off, and they pivoted to building the company around that.

Not saying they wouldn't be a bit disappointed, just that their original version changed at least once and they seem to have dealt with that ok.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#143

Post by nl »

zavulon wrote: post #29

Kudos to Google for understanding this and cutting their losses (relatively) early. I remember reading about their effort to cut down on useless products and focusing on the core search/AdWords/Gmail/etc, this is the effect of that. I really hope Buzz is next.

I like the fail fast strategy too.

But Buzz is great! What don't you like about it?

Re: Google Kills Wave

#144

Post by fragmede »

gecko wrote: post #39
spydez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...there is an "email me when a wave gets updated" option, you know. They even let you decide how often you want to get emailed. I chose once/day, but you could go all the way up to one email for every blip updated/added. And this way works with all email, not just gmail! There's a link in that email to send you straight to what's updated. How much integration do you want, exactly?

While you're correct, that option was added far too late. By the time that option was added, everyone in my organization had tried Wave and then given up on it. I revived its use in the last week, successfully, with that option, only to see that it's now going to die anyway. Really, all of Wave can be summarized by the fact that, at its launch, Wave deliberately refused to participate in any existing communications m…

It also sucked. You would get an email that something changed, and the context given was the first message/blip/whatever in the wave instead of the message added at the end. It was a huge let down to log into wave just to read 'yeah' as the entirety of the update. Leaving me to ignore wave update emails even more.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#145

Post by brg »

thorax wrote: post #52
sprout wrote: post #40

Wave may have been an idea whose time is yet to come. When I played around with the beta my brother and I agreed that it was too slow to be useful. That was the last time I touched it. This was mostly because I was working in a company where getting people to document was enough of a difficulty without introducing new software. If I'd worked somewhere with a bunch of early-adopters, it would have been a fantastic too…

> When I played around with the beta my brother and I agreed that it was too slow to be useful. That was the last time I touched it. Slow? I can only assume people who said this weren't using the latest FF or Chrome. I've never considered Wave slow at all.

The Chrome team valiantly tried to incorporate it into our design process, but stopped using it precisely because it was painfully slow.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#146

Post by swombat »

dpcan wrote: post #51

Sorry, but this is Google's fault. Right when all us geeks were HUNGRY to start trying out this system, only a handful of us received invites, and when I did, it took WEEKS or longer for anyone else I worked with to get an invite IF they ever did. So, Wave was useless to me to begin with and by the time it was available to everyone, I wasn't interested and neither were any of my co-workers. I would blame the launch f…

Completely agree. Whoever planned the launch strategy for Wave should be flogged.

Wave had huge potential. I can't believe Google are so short-sighted as to let it go so quickly, with so little effort.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#147

Post by swombat »

frossie wrote: post #134
mkramlich wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complement of Release Early/Often is probably Kill Early/Often. EDIT: spelling fixed, thanks!

You know what the complement of Kill Early/Often is? It's me never letting my shop use a new Google product ever again. People invest time in adopting these technologies. Sure, with a little startup you take into account the fact that they might not be able to survive, but with Google you think hey, okay, let's use this thing. And you start developing your process around it. And then you get burned when it gets dropp…

Yep, same here. I gave a friggen' talk about Wave at a TechCrunch event. I used it. I wrote an article about it. Inc.com wrote a "personal viewpoint" column where they presented me as a Wave supporter.

Google just lost all credibility with me as an early adopter. From now on, I'll wait 2 years before I start supporting a new Google product, since they apparently have no staying power.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#148

Post by swombat »

slavin wrote: post #115

i don't get which problem was it solving. is it cool that they've introduced character-by-character typing? well, kinda.. but is it useful at all? it's also cool (for someone) that it looks like a desktop app, but is it needed? it's maybe cool that i have all my contacts from gmail there, but do i need this? i mean i don't even get why would i think of my gmail as a social network, it's my inbox, and it's fine for wh…

I wrote an article on the topic back then:

http://danieltenner.com/posts/0012-google-wave.html

"What problems does Google Wave solve?"

Wave solved many problems. Google are idiots to axe it after barely a year and a half.

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