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Google Kills Wave

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Re: Google Kills Wave

#161

Post by pvg »

tc wrote: post #12

Wave 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…

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.

Aren't these two sentences contradictory? 'Wave is a great product if you changed the interface, integration points and, really, if it was a different product'. I think there's a tendency to over-analyze the reasons Wave was not a success because it got a lot of coverage and came from Google - a company with a long track record of many successes. Whatever the merits of the over-arching idea of Wave, the actual implementation and the thing you got to use, frankly, blew. An interesting technology demo, maybe but as an actual product it was a horrendous, inscrutable, clunky mess - no amount of market targeting, faster approval of beta invites and a score of other remedies that don't address the basic deficiencies of the product (e.g. largely unusable) could have saved Wave. This remains true despite the fact that there exist a few merry bands of hyper-intelligent and/or masochistic mutants who have managed to get some use out of it.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#162

Post by PanMan »

thought_alarm wrote: post #140
kenjackson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft announced, then released, spent $250M on advertising, and then killed a new phone in that time.

Microsoft made $250M profit yesterday.

While that sounds great, according to http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(+microsoft+profit+)+/+... it's actually 51 million/day. So it took them a full week to make the 250 million. Or was yesterday special?

Re: Google Kills Wave

#163

Post by jedc »

swombat wrote: post #146
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.

I get the sense that the launch strategy wasn't flawed as much as no one really understood the real use cases. Without that, no one knew how to properly communicate benefits and target the right users. (I would also guess that they never thought they'd get the level of publicity they got.)

And by the time Wave had had enough testing, they had lost all the early momentum. At some point you've got to choose where you put your effort!

Re: Google Kills Wave

#164

Post by j1o1h1n »

evansolomon wrote: post #28
jacquesm wrote: post #8

That didn't take very long now did it? I never even got around to checking it out. Aren't they afraid that the next product they announce in this fashion will be met with some scepticism from potential early adopters, who might think 'I'll wait for a bit to see if it stays', which in turn will lead to a cycle where it gets harder and harder for google to release new stuff and get it adopted? edit: would be nice if th…

They launched Wave in May of 2009. It's not like they yanked it all that quickly.

The public beta was only made available in May or June this year (as I recall).

Re: Google Kills Wave

#166

Post by elv »

I think Wave is a creative and full of effort generalization of a basic idea: adding something to GMail to promote online work coordination and cooperation. They went way too far and they realized it. I would, istread of throwing everything away, rework the concept and see what can come out.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#167

Post by anigbrowl »

tc wrote: post #12

Wave 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…

re. PS #3: I don't think it'll take 10 years to show up in gmail - at least, I hope not. I think Wave's great, but it's utility was limited by keeping it completely separated from existing tools (email, buzz, chat etc.).

Re: Google Kills Wave

#168

Post by bokchoi »

tomhogans wrote: post #96
brown9-2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Google did the same thing in the same time frame with the Nexus One, minus the ad budget. Sometimes disrupting existing markets and paradigms takes time, patience, and several iterations. (I'm still disappointed at how quickly they stopped the direct-sale idea with the Nexus One)

The biggest problem with selling the Nexus One direct was support. Carriers didn't want to support a phone that hadn't branded and Google couldn't accept that people don't want to ask a community message board and wait a few days for a reply when their phone doesn't work.

The community message board support model doesn't work for google. My current peeve is this god-awful bug thread for adding an additional account to an Android phone:

  http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=6981e6d970e2f29f&hl=en

Re: Google Kills Wave

#170

Post by tolmasky »

m104 wrote: post #120
alextgordon wrote: post #42

It 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…

I think there wouldn't have been a negative response to dropping Wave into GMail either. Wave was this cool new thing, and arguably an extension of mail, it would have made sense. COmpare that to Buzz where it was obvious they were just trying to compete against Twitter and leverage their existing user base.
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