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The Wave

By Kevin

Receding Tide

Apparently Google decided to cease development of Wave (but maintain the site at least for the remainder of the year) because users have not exactly found good uses of the product and thus adoption and usage is not exactly ideal. After the initial fanfare and hype about Google Wave, I didn't quite use it. I personally think that the recorded typing might be useful under certain circumstances but not always and so users should be allowed to easily disable it. The arrangement of the discussions should also be in reverse chronological order so that you don't have to try to scroll down a really long discussion.

I discover these main ills because I did use it for a collaborative project I did recently. The system is useful for us in general but there were times when it was down. Seeing your friends type in real time might be fun but without a powerful computer, it lags and you might be tempted to reply when your friend have not finished what he wants to say. The good thing is that almost everything is recorded and we can always check back when necessary.

Yet the 'failure' of Google Wave represents the success of Google; by working on many different projects, Google manages to explore multiple ideas at the same time. While different amount of resources and efforts are dedicated to different projects, they are willing to terminate even a high-profile, hyped project show that their model is successful. The ability to create such a 'market-based' testing is immensely useful to the firm. Much must have been learnt from failed experiences and we really should celebrate all that.