Lacking vision
9 August 2010
Seems like I’ve been wrong. Really, really wrong.
The announcement of Google Wave was huge PR splash for Big G. In fact, it was so huge that every media outlet was looking for a statement by somebody who can identify what exactly Google Wave is and when exactly it will releave old Dr. E-Mail from its duties. I’ve been one of those people who stepped in front of a couple of microphones. I never promised a soonish switch from E-Mail to Wave, but I did promise that Google Wave is more than the client that Google released and most everybody didn’t like. From my perspective, Wave was for Google mostly the technology in the background.
As I said, I was wrong.
I never spoke to anybody from Google about their plans about Google Wave and by now I almost believe that the media frenzy wasn’t planed and indeed turned out to be a problem for the product and the technology itself. The expectations bar went through the roof and made it impossible to succeed.
The fact, that most people didn’t like Google Wave didn’t help either, although I’m very sure that it was indeed much better than most people are saying. It required a bit time – more then the usual tech blogger, who is required to write 50 blog posts a day to make rent in either New York or San Francisco could afford to spent with. And that was that.
Sure, there are some grave usability issues and Google Wave isn’t really the kind of web service that calls itself self-explanatory. Again, this was mostly based on the fact that it didn’t wanted to be a single purpose machine – it was whatever the user wanted it to be (in the range of its technological limitation). This again is in a world of curation, where Apple tells everybody how to hold an iPhone is not really something that people understand.
Let me put it this way: I’ve managed a dozen different project in Google Wave. There is a complete conference organizing thing going on in my account and … oh … I’m planing a company complete with Google Wave. For me it was the best tool for collaboration out there, mostly because indeed it was not only a Wiki, a chat, etc. – it was a complex instrument that delivered.
You might think, that I indeed blame all the people who didn’t like Google Wave. Not at all. I find it a bit frustrating, that so many lack the ability to confront themselves with technology for a bit longer then 30 seconds, but the problem is really not there.
The problem is, that Google doesn’t seem to know what they want. After Google announced the fact that they’re not going to continue develop Wave anymore, Eric Schmidt told a bunch of people that that’s the way Google is doing things. It releases them to the public and follows the adoption curve.
Well, crap.
First of, there are a lot of products at Google that have been released to the public, which practically nobody uses and somehow don’t get shut down. That’s of course, because most of them don’t have a huge development team sitting in Sidney, I get that. But the problem isn’t the cost either, it’s the lack of vision and Google’s ability to execute new ideas till the end. With that kind of attitude, it will be very hard for Google to compete on anything beside its cash cow (search) and it will be harder for them not to be seen as a single purpose company that covers the basics (release early, release often), but doesn’t seem to know how to go beyond that.
In future, I will have to measure this into the equation, if somebody asks me something about a new Google product.
Wow I pretty much couldn’t agree more. The interface took a lot of time to get used to. But after that initial hurdle it was very useful, at least for collaborations. I didn’t like it very much as an email replacement. That might be due to the fact that, people would forget to check into their wave.
That was actually one of the big complaints I heard from people. “I don’t get notified when something new is there.” Which wasn’t entirely true. If you left wave open in a tab you saw it in the title, and there were a couple of desktop app-like tools that gave you updates periodically.
I still believe Google is right about one thing. Email is outdated. But instead of replacing it with something new maybe it could just be enhanced to modernize it. Images and HTML weren’t part of the initial spec for email and they got tacked on along the way.
Most of us can do just fine without all the fancy real-time update technology in there. Give us the other enhancements.
In one way I must object though. Google didn’t necessarily lack vision. They lack pulling it through. I remember how they were explaining their vision of an open Wave protocol, to subsequently replace email, at their press conference introducing Wave.
— Sam Figueroa · Aug 9, 01:42 PM · #
I’m also disappointed that Google is shutting down wave. I didn’t use it very much, but i’ve seen a lot of different projects where i would have loved to realize some parts or the complete communication using Wave.
In fact in my current project Wave would be really great and much better than the current convoluted mass of different tools like jabber, wiki, mail, mailing lists and other tools. But due to security and privacy issues this will not happen here, it could only happen on own hardware and servers. What a shame.
So i’ve seen a lot of potential in wave, but couldn’t get clients to work with it. And that’s probably the story for a lot of other people too.
— Dirk · Aug 9, 01:46 PM · #
There are a couple of usability issues there, but I don’t think that there are critical. The notification thing was an issue for a while. Soon Google started sending out eMail notifications as soon as a Wave was modified, yes.
I read somewhere, that people would probably have used Wave more, if it was integrated into GMail as Buzz. Maybe, maybe not. I also read how many people complained about the fact that Google integrated Buzz into GMail.
As for the lack of vision: I think some people had the idea of where it might go, even a vision, but Google as a company did not. The statement of Eric Schmidt made this pretty much clear. And that’s a problem. A company like Google must of course count in the feedback they’re getting, but they only can stand behind an idea, if it’s a vision that everybody can understand.
— Igor · Aug 9, 01:48 PM · #
Dirk, I guess that’s right. I assumed, that more people would jump onto the technology behind Google Wave, which wasn’t really new – it’s XMPP after all – and was completely open source. It made a lot of sense, in a way it still does, since the technology is still available and could be used by anyone.
Then again, the problem was in the communication. For most people, Google Wave = Google Wave web client. Which of course isn’t the the whole story. That made investing in the technology very hard. For developers and for companies.
Still, I hope that the technology isn’t going to get lost and we might end up seeing custom solutions, self-hosted by individuals and / or companies. It’s not realistic after Google dropped the development, but who knows …
— Igor · Aug 9, 01:53 PM · #