Google put absolutely 0 muscle behind this product. Android got front page placement on Google and it has now overtaken iPhone. They either didn't truly believe in Wave or the marketing team just made a huge gaffe by not even making a half ass attempt to push this product to the consumer world.
Google Kills Wave
111–120 of 246 posts
Re: Google Kills Wave
#112I was thinking about this recently: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1362223
Re: Google Kills Wave
#113Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. Did Google believe that this was going to succeed as a consumer product, à la Facebook? Wave, as it exists today, is a great tool for corporate communications. With the right interfaces, integration, and extensions it could definitely displace Exchange and Lotus Notes. Eventually, as a protocol, it had the potential to transcend email. Maybe Google just hoped W…
Too bad you could never run it inside the firewall AFAIK.
Novell is working in something you could like: http://www.novell.com/products/pulse/
Re: Google Kills Wave
#114It failed because it was completely invisible. Facebook spams your inbox. They make sure you know that you have an account and that people are trying to reach you (or tell the world about their cat, etc). With wave, it's silent. There was activity on a wave I was following in January. I found out about it in March. Someone replied to something I said on July 21st. I'm only just finding out now . What kind of a commun…
The sad thing here is that Google did the polite thing, and turned off email notifications by default. It actually took some searching to figure out how to turn it on. Contrast this with Buzz, where they dropped it right in the middle of your inbox. Quite the opposite strategy. I suppose the solution I favor is to ask the user if they want notifications when they sign up. Or at the very least making it very obvious h…
The polite thing usually doesn't make good business sense. Ask Bill Gates.
Re: Google Kills Wave
#115i 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 what it does.
I mean its hard not to appreciate people trying to innovate, but it actually has to solve some sort of problem.. or maybe it's just me not getting the concept (however it's still so much more interesting than all these buzz, rule.fm etc)
Re: Google Kills Wave
#116Re: Google Kills Wave
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google docs is very similar to what etherpad used to be. All be it far less user friendly you can watch others edit and update in real time.
Yes, you're right, but "albeit" is the word you're looking for, not "all be it".
Re: Google Kills Wave
#118I feel bad for the Etherpad guys, who as I understand it, sold AppJet to Google to work on Google Wave: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=977015
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 ;)
They are probably working on something cool after wave. Maybe Google Me?
Re: Google Kills Wave
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
We use it exclusively for our meeting status reports, etc. It's just a wicked solid tool for meetings and out-of-band document collaboration. I'd love to see it continue. I'm sad it didn't get the adoption they wanted, but I also wonder what they expected when they didn't even really try to integrate it with GMail. If they could go back and time, exclude Buzz from Gmail but instead add Wave, I think they'd have bette…
If they could go back and time, exclude Buzz from Gmail but instead add Wave, I think they'd have better success for it. No question. Wave should have been an alternate view of your Gmail account. Instead it was a completely distinct environment that you had to manage separately, which most people aren't going to be bothered to do.
Not to mention that for the first few months, none of my friends had an account. So even though I wanted to Wave, I couldn't really do it.
Once a few of my friends joined in, we thought we could plan our road-trips etc. on it easily and share photos later. Even then, there were always a few who said "What's a Wave?".
Re: Google Kills Wave
#120It failed because it was completely invisible. Facebook spams your inbox. They make sure you know that you have an account and that people are trying to reach you (or tell the world about their cat, etc). With wave, it's silent. There was activity on a wave I was following in January. I found out about it in March. Someone replied to something I said on July 21st. I'm only just finding out now . What kind of a commun…
You're right: completely invisible. Wave would have been so cool if Google had plopped it right on top of Gmail, like Gchat and Buzz. Our Wave-enabled contacts would have gotten their messages as waves, seamlessly, and non-Wave contacts would have continued to receive regular emails. Wave collaboration could have been supported with notification emails to non-Wave contacts, like "we're editing this on Wave, so click here {...} to join in." Best of all, every Gmail user would have been upgraded to Wave... I thought that was supposed to be the plan! What a waste.
I'd like to ask one of the top Googlers just what they were thinking by positioning Wave as a replacement to email, chat, and online collaboration and NOT integrating those services into Wave itself. IPv4 to IPv6, hello! No migration plan means no migration. Email support means being able to use Wave and email at the same time; not having to choose.
Still trying to wrap my head around this, but at this point I'm not sure what's worse: a) Planning, developing, implementing, marketing, and supporting Wave as communications platform without regards to Gmail, Gchat, and Buzz or b) Axing Wave before trying to add Gmail, Gchat, and Buzz support