The Death of Google Wave- Will Anyone Miss It?

In 2009 Google unveiled their newest addition Google Wave. Although it stayed in beta testing, from the start, it was met with mixed reviews. The idea for the service was revolutionary, but the actual application was hard to use and didn't really solve any problems. The concept was to make a service where you can link your friends together and contribute to a single thread or “wave” in real time. To make users even more connected, Google teamed up with Ribbit to offer an app that would allow real time voice calls and speech to text capability. According to co-creator Lars Rasmussen, who explained it on the Google Blog when it was launched,

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

The Google Wave never caught on, and in a blog on their site, Google announced on August 4^th that they would be ending the service. In their post, they stated

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.

For many loyal Google users, (myself included) the Wave seemed to be a solution to a problem that they didn't have. Although the idea of real time connectivity and collaboration was certainly appealing, in real time use, Wave was clunky and hard to figure out. With the lack of other users, it was difficult to play with the service and learn how it works. It seemed to be a collection of applications that were good at doing a variety of things, but none of them were really good at doing just one thing.

Since the announcement, many developers have been discussing the service and what was good about the Wave. In an article on ArsTechnica, Ryan Paul said

From the perspective of a software developer, Wave is a technological marvel that pushes the boundaries of concurrent messaging and modern Web standards. Despite its prodigious sophistication under the hood, the service never resonated with its target audience. Regular end users saw it as a mismatched amalgamation of disparate messaging paradigms blended together in a cumbersome Web-based interface.

Personally, I think that Google should be proud of all of their successes and the team they have assembled. Being forward thinking is risky, sometimes you win and sometimes you strike out. They may have struck out with the Wave, but the idea is still out there, and that is what is important. Perhaps one day Google, or some other company will be able to build on this model to come up with a next gen messaging platform that will combine all of our needs to connect. But until that time, you can still check out the Wave until the end of the year.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a freelance writer and regular contributor to several websites and other publications, a volunteer, a full time mom and an active job seeker.