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Google Kills Wave

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Re: Google Kills Wave

#31

Post by spydez »

brown9-2 wrote: post #11
zandorg wrote: post #3

They blew it big time by hyping it for RPGs, which never went anywhere. Get the RPGers on board, perhaps, and you can succeed.

They blew it by making it confusing to understand what you'd use it for, making it confusing to know which of your friends had accounts (no integration with gmail!) and confusing to know when someone sent you a new "wave" (no integration with gmail!).

...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?

Re: Google Kills Wave

#32

Post by semanticist »

wmf wrote: post #19
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…

Too bad you could never run it inside the firewall AFAIK.

There's no reason they couldn't provide an appliance (like the Google Search Appliance: http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/gsa.html) or simply make it available for a local install (like every mail server used by every company that cares about things being 'inside the firewall').

Re: Google Kills Wave

#34

Post by tessro »

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.

Given the "this is the future of communication" fanfare, I think some of us expected it to be a long term play.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#35

Post by chc »

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.

It was announced in May 2009. It wasn't publicly released until three months ago (http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20005394-264.html).

Re: Google Kills Wave

#36

Post by tessro »

wmf wrote: post #19
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…

Too bad you could never run it inside the firewall AFAIK.

All the protocols were open-sourced as part of the initiative. I think they envisioned a world in which inside-the-wall installations existed in the same way the companies have Exchange servers today.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#37

Post by whakojacko »

StavrosK wrote: post #14
Goosey wrote: post #5

I, for one, am very dissapointed by this. Even worse I feel somehow partially responsible. I have been a huge proponent of Wave in theory, but even after getting into the early beta I just never found myself /using/ it. I blame this mainly on it lacking the social graph I cared about.. But I thought I could just bide my time and in 5 years it would have taken over. I am starting to feel like I will have to deal with…

I blame it on never understanding the UI, the way it did things, or its usefulness. It's like a chat you can't delete things from, and everyone sees what you type and all your mistakes? And you can post pictures? I just don't get it.

Not to mention its crazy amount of javascript usage-Wave brought most of the browsers I tried it on to a crawl on my laptop. I really like the concept, but for many reasons never liked the execution.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#38

Post by tessro »

jakevoytko wrote: post #22

You can't make people solve problems they don't have. If Google failed with the Hype Winds at their backs, then I doubt anybody can do it.

That's an interesting perspective. I would state it somewhat differently, though. I think Wave solved too many problems simultaneously, making it overly complex in some ways and hiding its true utility in others.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#39

Post by gecko »

spydez wrote: post #31
brown9-2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They blew it by making it confusing to understand what you'd use it for, making it confusing to know which of your friends had accounts (no integration with gmail!) and confusing to know when someone sent you a new "wave" (no integration with gmail!).

...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 medium other than Wave. This meant that everyone you cared about had to get on Wave. Since that couldn't possibly happen, Wave was doomed from the start. Nothing about today's announcement is remotely a surprise to me.

Re: Google Kills Wave

#40

Post by sprout »

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 tool.

On the other hand, Wave seems like a tool that almost replicates all of the benefits of being in the same room as someone. I don't think there's a better way to do a distributed workplace. (Of course, I haven't tried.)

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