So, you may’ve heard of Google Wave, it was ‘The Next Big Thing.’ Well it was until it’s disastrous unveiling which co-opted user privacy in Gmail and summarily destroyed any chance it had of catching on. Sure there were some other nifty features it had:
“A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.”
And there was the nifty video
In late June Google Wave finally came out of Beta and no longer needed an ‘invitation’ to join. Hooray! A google product not in Beta, well that is definitely a feat.
Coincidentally, I actually figured out a use case for Wave!
But alas, a product that COULD have been great was left to twist in the wind and slowy asphyxiate as the google machine thrummed along. Now, I’ll admit, I never used it, but then again, you probably hadn’t either. The main problem with Google Wave is it was an answer looking for a problem. Not to mention noone ever really quite ‘got it.’ So this week is it any surprise that the news is “Yesterday, Google announced that they are halting development on Wave. The webapp will be available till the end of the year—with mechanisms to export your current wave data—and the code will remain open source.”
Part of the problem is, people are just used to Beta, they’ve become used to products that don’t work or kinda work while the user’s figure out the problems and the kinks and suggest work arounds for the publishers to use. People also, seem to have forgotten what a Final version is, they want all the versatility of a Beta but none of the finality of a Gold/Final version and so you have half-assed products with no clear direction that are kinda designed by committee, unfortunately the Internetz makes a lousy committee. I could go on with other flaws but here’s a kicker that everyone seems to forget. Google.Is.An.Advertising.Company.
Google offers you all these nifty ‘products’ because they sell ads. They aren't a tech company, but people are so fascinated by “new” they jettison common sense, then get mad when a company that yes, has engineers, can’t seem to get the pulse of the community. They don’t have to, it’s not their core business, they sell ads. A lot of ads. But they aren’t marketers, they also, aren't designers. So yes, their designs look like crap, most prototypes do. Make no mistake, everything Google does is a prototype and a hobby.
Oh… you didn’t realize that did you? Yes, Google Docs, Gmail, all those “cool services” in the cloud you enjoy for free… they’re all just a hobby. Google has a ton of hobbies, just look
(click pic to goto Google option page)
and the thing is, you probably didn’t even know about 80% of them. The thing about hobbies though, is they’re fun, like a game and they aren’t: Work. hobbies aren’t your job, you do them because you want to not because you have to and when you get bored or tired, you stop. In this particular case Wave went from a hobby, to work and frankly, Google didn’t want to do it as work because it wasn’t as fun or profitable as they’d hoped. So, what about the people that got to attached to it….?
Just try to remember, using a Beta is like hooking up, it’s wild and fun and you both had a great time, but you really didn’t think it was a relationship did you?
