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Google Wave: What Went Wrong?

Posted 5th August 2010 by Daniel     Email article      Share article

Upon its release last year, Google Wave was the hottest new tool to hit the internet, and had everyone clambering to receive one of the rare invites that were seemingly few and far between. But having been announced in May and partially released in September 2009, here we are less than a year later and development of the product has been suspended.

So why didn’t it take off? On release it was stated as being a much needed update for email and went under the tagline of, “Communicate and Collaborate in Real Time”. So confident were they about the success of the product, they limited its release to invites, meaning many people received a Google Wave account and then had nobody to communicate or collaborate with.

Having been excited at the prospect of receiving an invite myself, I was shocked to find how little I used it once I finally got one. I found that the aspects of email it had tried to change and make better had already been done by other products. If I want to get in contact with someone in the office I use a web based messenger, if I want to show someone an updated website draft image, I can load it onto the server in seconds. With the constant editing of information on screen and layers of text being added, it began to look and feel as though I was playing about with MSN Messenger or iChat again.

Another query of interest is the introduction of Google Buzz at a time when they were still trying to promote and make something of Google Wave. The two products aren’t exactly the same but they are similar enough in terms of usability and appearance that you would wonder why they didn’t combine the two ideas together in the first place to make something all the more user orientated.

Indeed Google may have shot themselves in the foot by bringing out another product that took away some of the “buzz” if you will, of their previous product that was still crying out for some publicity to make it into something that the public wanted to use.

Google Wave looks set be a failure for Google, something they haven’t experienced too much off in recent times. They have however garnered a fair level of criticism down the years and this looks set to be one more to add to the pile. Time will tell whether they will learn from their mistake and do a better job with Google Buzz.

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