Google Wave gets canned!

There was a lot of fanfare about Google Wave when it was launched last year, but other than a few excited web designers and marketers, what has become of Google Wave, and does anyone use it?

It doesn't look like it, at least according to Googles Blog.

"Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops.

We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication....

...But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, 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"

Official Google Blog: Update on Google Wave

Rest in peace Google Wave

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cheers Steve
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Problem was always going to be getting the growth as you needed mutual parties to be using it. Perhaps ahead of it's time?

Wave bye-bye!

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I never heard about it

I'm a little bit miffed. I've been using it as a collaboration tool for the wedding (bridesmaid is 150 miles away) along with a wonderful shared spreadsheet in Google Docs. I'd just got all sorts of countdown widgets and timelines and whatnots in the Wave, now I find out that the servers will be turned off before the countdowns complete.

But even for a Google fan like me, it had so many flaws.

1) Unless you were using Chrome, you had to download stuff to make it work. This eliminated people who don't have administrator privileges on their work computers, and was off-putting to people who dislike or are not confident in making software changes. It also made it less portable - despite being on the Google cloud, you couldn't just borrow someone's computer to show them your Wave unless they *had* Wave already.

2) Using it was dependent on being in contact with other people who were using it. But because of the "invitation" scheme, I got onto it, watched the demo, and then sat there in virtual solitude thinking "ho hum, this will be good if anyone else joins." By the time I was given my first five invites to distribute, I'd pretty much wandered off to do something else, and by the time any of those people had actually *joined* (and several of them didn't because of point 1 above) the hype was gone.

3) It didn't integrate with Google Docs in any meaningful way. That's why I was having to work with both Wave and Docs as two almost completely separate things.

Still, I'm kind of hoping that the mothballing of Wave will allow for greater collaboration tools within Docs itself. Plus, there's several months notice, so I can get started on making sure I don't lose anything important. I'm disappointed but not devastated.

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Interesting though Mary that you tried it out and although flawed, found it useful?

Anyone else have any favourable experiences? I remember our man Kip singing it's praises when it came out and think he did some video tutorials.

Kept meaning to check it out, but always slid down the "to do" list!

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cheers Steve
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I tried to use it once to work on a shared list when I was reviewing a website with a client. Thought it would be the best way to keep track of required changes.

However, I just found it too 'buggy' and not particularly easy to use. Probably wasted more time trying to set that up than we saved by not duplicating points!

It sounded brilliant in theory but I wouldn't have ever gone back to use it for anything else in future.

I like the sound of Mary's suggestion of getting more Wave-like features within Google Docs. I love Google Docs!

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I used it once or twice and thought it had plenty of potential. I think that was its downfall, people don't expect Google products to have potential, they expect them to be the complete product and 100% ready.

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