OKay, Google has officially announced it, Google Wave is going to die by the end of this year!
Google Wave was a product that Google set high expectations in users’ minds. And that very over expectings showed Google Wave it’s way to grave. Even I wrote a blog post called “Google Wave වලට කලින්ම එකතු වෙමු ?” – in Sinhala – inviting my readers to join Google Wave early. I was so fascinated about Google Wave after watching that two-and-half hours long video about Google Wave at Google I/O 2009!
I am not going to write on the reasons that caused Google Wave to find it’s death; Mashable.com has come up with a nice post discussing the reasons for the failure of Google Wave, called “Lessons Google Can Learn From Wave’s Failure“.
Even though Google Wave ended up with a failure, it had some qualities that were very interesting and useful. (The reason why people didn’t catch them up was, Google Wave was a very fat webapp that used system resources a lot, and it was somewhat complex.)
Etherpad was a platform that allowed collaborative online editing of text and Google bought it. Finally, Etherpad reappeared online as the Google Wave’s real time collaborative editor!
In fact, a real time collaborative editor would be a service that someone’d expect from Google. After Google Wave’s failure, Google shouldn’t leave Etherpad aside as ruins. May be Google can introduce a “Collaborate” tab to GMail as they introduced Google Buzz as just a new tab of GMail interface!
Google should adopt entire Google Wave text editor into GMail’s “Collaborate” tab. The editor in Google Wave was so attractive, including it’s play-back option!
Users should be able to add people in their contacts’ lists to each collaborating thread. Unlike in Google Wave, removing their-selves from a collaborating thread must actually remove that thread from their “Collaborate” tab.
Another thing that Google shouldn’t allow to die along with Google Wave, is it’s extensions collection; it is too cute to be allowed to die!
May be Google Will be able to introduce something called “GMail Extensions” – don’t misunderstand with “GMail Labs”! – and port Google Wave extensions to it!
And don’t forget this nice little scroll-bar, it so Web 2.0+ and sexy!
Thats quite a few ideas, lets wish Google get the same and plus ideas and do something “simple and meaningful” with Google Wave’s ruins!
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i dont know about the others but the reason why i didnt use it because i had very few friends that has google. when people wanted to use it there were not enough invitations. when you dont have a good friend list with WAVE how can you really use it ?
Posted by තරිඳු on August 7th, 2010.
@තරිඳු: Yes, that is another reason caused the death of Google Wave. Even though Google called it is for collaborating tasks, they offerered very limited invitations in the beginning. How can one "collaborate" without anyone else?
It is true that Google took more users into the system – months – later. But users didn't care as their first impression was *so* bad!
It is all discussed in http://mashable.com/2010/08/06/google-wave-lesson…
Posted by budhajeewa on August 7th, 2010.
Just visited here to share that post you mentioned in your comment.
In fact google was hurry since Facebook also included Facebook Lite which has n't so treading like twitter. Would n't google worry when Google have to complete with facebook to keep their page-visiting records and advertisement services?
Posted by Narada Thomas on August 7th, 2010.
haha.. Wave is fucking mistake that Google did.. lol
Wave is a thing that is not suitable for this era, but for the future where people does all their work through the internet and people has powerful computers. I dunno why Google didn't realize this :O
Posted by Indranama on August 7th, 2010.
@Narada Thomas: Well, I don't see Facebook as a threat to whole Google, but Google'll never succeed in social networking, while Facebook is out-there. Google should be-friend with Facebook, rather than trying to attack it with Orkut – which is popular *only* in India and Brazil – or any other thing.
@Indranama: Yes, true! Google invented the wheel while human actually were apes!
@All: Don't you people think, some features that were in Google Wave can be re-introduced meaningfully?
Posted by budhajeewa on August 7th, 2010.
@Budhajeewa, Basically Orkut was popular since google included it and marketed in those countries pretty well. It has became an alternative for Myspace. I have heard some rumors that google is working on something named "GoogleMe", It does not make any sence for me.
Agree with your point. Let's see how things going on.
What features do you want google to reintroduced?
Posted by Narada Thomas on August 8th, 2010.
@Narada Thomas:
[said:Narada Thomas]
What features do you want google to reintroduced?
[/said]
That is what written in the post.
Posted by budhajeewa on August 8th, 2010.
Me and two of my friends used the collaborative editing of a single thread feature for a good cause (on the very first days of Wave). Can't imagine how we'd have managed without that then. The main problem for us was lack of speed.
I want google to reintroduce that feature, not as in gmail, not as in google docs, but as it was there in google wave, but with much better speed.
Posted by thameera on August 10th, 2010.
@thameera: Well, if they integrate that as a separate tab in GMail, it won't make a mess with normal GMails, will it?
Posted by budhajeewa on August 10th, 2010.
@budhajeewa: Hmm, yes, that'd be better.
Posted by thameera on August 10th, 2010.