A Rolling Wave Gathers No Users…

Well, it’s about time. Google is finally taking the initiative to shut down Wave, ending the company’s most heinous failure since… no, actually, this could be the company’s most heinous failure.

What’s wrong with Wave? In concept, nothing – an open-source environment that combines email and live chat with a practically Wikipedian vibe into one intense collaboration tool? Hell, both my roommate and I heralded Wave as the beginning of the end of traditional email. The idea is perfect.

Then, of course, the concept was executed, and the entire world it scratched its head as if to say ‘what the f*** is this?’ Simply put, Wave is poorly designed. That’s not at all a big shock for a Google product, but Wave makes you wonder whether they hire designers at all. In the software world, interface is everything, and even advanced computer users couldn’t seem to navigate Wave with any clarity. It took me months to successfully have my first Wave, and even when I did, it was absolutely awkward and difficult. And my collaborator was in the same room.

Says Google of the decision:

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. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

‘Liberate’. I don’t think they could have chosen a more poignant word. Freedom from Wave.

Wave is still a good idea, and I hope we do see Wave-like products in the future. Treated properly, the Wave concept could indeed spell bad news for email.

But seriously, Google. Wave sucks. Good call.