Wave Postmortem
August 27, 2010
Want to know why Google Wave was almost as interesting as the demise of the Google Nexus One? Point your browser to “Wave Goodbye: A Tech Autopsy of Google’s Failed Communication Platform.” I found the discussion interesting. One passage jumped out at me. Here’s the snippet:
“I was in the sweet spot for Wave,” says Gina Trapani, the former editor of Lifehacker who, with Adam Pash, wrote The Compete Guide to Google Wave. “I’m a writer and a software developer, and I work with small teams—teams of six to 12 people who usually have a specific purpose, like drafting a blog post or technical documents.” Trapani says that Wave let such teams work together much more efficiently than they could via e-mail or other tools. Among other useful features, she cites Wave’s ability to let people reply in-line to sections of text. “When you want to respond to something someone said 12 messages ago, that was a really easy way to do it,” she says. Going back to other systems without that power “felt really primitive after using Wave.” But as Trapani concedes, these kinds of features probably weren’t attractive to everyone. “Wave did solve a problem, but it was a pretty advanced problem for pretty advanced users,” she says.
I agree. Google, after its success in Web search, seems unable to duplicate that service’s success. Google has high hopes for Android, its rich media play, and its enterprise applications. In contrast to some of Google’s capable competitors, misfires, not between-the-eyes shots, seem to be a defining characteristic of the company as the summer of 2010 winds down.
Stephen E Arnold, August 27, 2010
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