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Google Wave had its first birthday yesterday, but got no presents
When the folks at Google posted a Happy Birthday to Wave yesterday, it was difficult to tell whether or not they were being sarcastic or serious about it.
It's now been a year since the first Wave demo wowed audiences the world over, only for those audiences to be sorely disappointed months later to find out that they not only couldn't get ahold of invites to use Wave, but that it offered little to no usefulness once they did.
Just over a week ago, Google finally opened up Wave -- taking it out of secret society mode and gifting it to the general public. But despite the overwhelming enthusiasm of some Googlers, nobody's really buying it.
"Can you imagine a world without Wave today?" Google's official post asked.
Probably, since there's a pretty high likelihood that you've never used it. Just about everybody I know that's tried Wave has had the same experience -- which is to say that they stopped using it about half an hour after they started. Honestly, I don't really blame them.
I use Wave for work when collaborating with a partner, just because we started using it months ago and it works for that singular purpose; but using it for anything other than a simple collaborative outline just isn't worth the pain -- and I do mean pain, because between the creeping slowness of Wave and the wrestling needed to get it to behave, painful is the only way to describe it.
Take chatting: One of the major selling points that Google uses for Wave is the typing and how it's leveraged for better communication. You and your friends can see what's being typed as it's typed, and you can later edit what's been typed -- whether it was by you or someone else in the wave.
When people first saw those features in action, there was a bunch of ZOMG THAT'S AWESOME going around, but it all changed when they actually got to try it. Turns out it's horribly annoying to sit and watch as people peck out typo after mind-numbing typo, constantly backtracking to fix them as they go -- and make no mistake, no matter how fast a typist you may be in a normal setting, when your words are being broadcast in real-time, you're all but guaranteed to look like a middle-school keyboarding class dropout. As for being able to edit other people's text... it's more often a license for shenanigans than it is a tool for productivity.
Then there's that bit about Wave replacing email. Those of you out there that have used Wave: honestly, can you really see Wave replacing email? It barely works as Wave. So happy birthday Google Wave; I hope you have many more, because at this rate you're going to need as many as you can get for people to start using you.
Comments
14
Subscribe to commentsMuffin_manMay 29th 2010 1:46PM
I thought wave looked dumb from its first announcement. I honestly didn't understand the hype.
People editing documents in real-time? That was something I knew wouldn't work. How are you supposed to proof read something that has changed by the time you look at it again?
Android underlingMay 29th 2010 2:20PM
I wanted to love Wave, I really did. However, its just useless to me. I wish they would port over the UI to gmail, since that is one thing they did really well.
laeroMay 30th 2010 4:55AM
Second that, was working with a project and we really tried to use Wave, but ended up with a combination of etherpad and plain old mail and local editing.
stinlen56May 29th 2010 7:38PM
Matthew is spot on with this post. I remember using Pow-wow which had real time typing in the chat feature in the mid-90's. It wasn't a good idea then, and it isn't a good idea now. When ICQ came along and solidified the instant messaging paradigm, the relief was palpable.
Matthew RogersMay 29th 2010 7:45PM
I really miss those early ICQ days :)
RussellMay 29th 2010 8:30PM
The inmates are running the asylum at Google. You have a bunch of really smart engineers who think that, coz they're smart or coz they can talk faster than you can, they can do anything - including creating an experience that humans will love. Arrogant jerks. The sad truth is that the $200,000 your daddies spent on your Stanford/MIT/CMU/insert-elitist-overpriced-school computer science degrees won't make you a good designer of high quality user experiences. So long as google is run by engineers they'll continue to produce the kind of crap that makes for a great demo but when is put to real use is still just crap. Like Wave. Sure they'll have a win every once in a while like gmail. But there are far more bombs than successes.
JeebusMay 31st 2010 11:08PM
Yeah, because having it run by MBAs is gonna reverse that and produce even better products.
AnthonyMay 30th 2010 12:00AM
I totally agree. Wave SUCKS! I am excited to see how Office 2010's co-authoring feature will work, though. It's supposed to be similar to this, but I've yet to use it. Hopefully it will work much better than Wave.
(BTW, if anyone has used the co-authoring feature in Office 2010, how is it?)
jeff.ottingerMay 30th 2010 12:36AM
Wave isn't a bad product. To put the conversation (wave) at a central location and have people add to it is a much better communication model than email, where portions of the conversation can be lost (by replying) over the course of a conversation.
Google's handling of releasing Wave was horrible though. To release it without backwards compatibility to email was a huge mistake. I started using it, realized that without this feature it was "just a toy" and haven't used it since.
MYMHMMay 30th 2010 4:05AM
I REALLY like Wave, but so few of my friends use it. I'm actually really glad to see Wave features showing up in other Google products (like Docs for example). I think Wave will end up being a failed experiment by itself (a service that replicates a lot of features in many of Google's other products), but the tech that went into it, and the collaboration tools Google has worked on for it, will CERTAINLY improve their products.
John Wall's GhostMay 31st 2010 12:37AM
The question I could never answer is why is Google Wave more efficient than a conference call or just meeting with the person face-to-face? I now that its all "high tech" but a solution without a problem is always going to fail. The pseudo-exclusivity to build market demand was also lame.
'narMay 30th 2010 9:36PM
I really want to like this. The woman who wrote SMTP said we needed to throw email out and write a new protocol from scratch. Email has too many issues, but it somehow became the standard.
Whatever problems I've seen with Wave, it still is better than email. You can always create a wave and then another, and another, instead of updating the wave. The only problem was, it was invite only and I had nobody to converse with. Now that it is open I hope to have better luck.
I do agree that backward compatibility with email would be great, but is it possible? Or would that be like trying to hookup a propane tank to an electric stove? Square peg, round hole anyone?
patrickMay 31st 2010 5:21AM
I think wave was a good tech demo, and some of the ideas behind it are great. Where it failed was in the packaging. How to use it, and why you would use it, are not immediately clear from the interface. Some of the coolest things, like the live searching and public waves, are hidden behind clunky interface commands that are hard to remember. Not only is the interface clunky, but it's god awful slow. I could see myself using it a lot more if i didn't feel like i was working on a 20 year old computer while using it. Browser freezes/crashes, long load times for bigger waves, almost no navigation features within a wave. Arg. There were a lot of things I liked about it, but I just can't bring myself to open it any more.
There was supposed to be a feature to turn off the character at a time. At least during the preview period, everyone kept asking where this feature was. I don't know if they ever added it, but I was getting bad vibes even then since such a simple feature as that was not being developed.
The ideas may be good, but the implementation fell very flat. This one needed to be in the cooker a few more years before being unveiled I think. Now the reputation is a bit tarnished, I don't see them being able to save it.
provokoMay 31st 2010 12:05PM
i think wave is pretty good, it's free, wtf is with all the complaints, spoiled brats