Is Google Wave a Flop?
In may 2009, at the Google I/O Conference, Lars Rasmussen presented a new Google application called “Google Wave” that should have revolutionized the way to communicate and collaborate on-line. The new Google product immediately took many positive comments and was defined as one of the most promising tools of 2010. But the initial enthusiasm was short lived. Google Wave is an application that merges instant messaging, e-mail, document editor, wiki tool and much more, but it seems none of this.
The lack of clarity in what the application does, generates confusion so that many users report that Google Wave is nothing else then a “big” chat, too complicated, unclear and confusing.
In all honesty, I had the same sensation every time I tried to use it. Google Wave should be the killer application to manage, for example, living group projects or for brainstorming sessions but in practice its disadvantages are more than its advantages. One for all: chatting is an activity that requires a lot of time and is totally impracticable in all these situations that require complex interactions between many users.
If I need to do a brainstorming session with the other members of the group I’m working with, I prefer to do a conference call using Skype or iChat rather then wasting time in a chat. Talking directly with your partners is without doubt a faster and more productive way to collaborate.
Another aspect to consider is that Google Wave is not strictly a product for the masses such as Facebook or Twitter but it’s more addressed to professional users and this can limit its diffusion (by the way, SAP launched 12Spints a collaborative decision-making tool to solve business problems collaboratively and in real time inspired to Wave).
What’s the future of Google Wave? Will it have the same destiny of other Google products such as Google Answers or Lively (launched in july 2008 and hastily closed six months after) or the same success of GMail? What do you think?
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Same thoughts after the wave usage.
This is like a big chat that remembers what each “speaker” did.
Speaking of “innovative collaboration”, it becomes too complicated. Private to-do’s, commenting, anyone can change anything, that becomes a big mess.
What frustrates more, the “cool widgets” of twitter and facebook are not public-opened, only for developers. You have to “know” how to do it, no intuition involved. Read manual or go away thinking “how am i supposed to do the things they did on I/O?”
They should do their service less complicated, I hope they will do so.
Well, to defend the Wave team, this is the developer Preview…. not production, neither Beta and actually not even alpha… Google are pretty darn good at making things simple, wouldn’t you agree? reference: (www.google.com)
Well, like all new things, humans react negatively towards them.
The IPad and Google Wave is a great example of that!
Since we do not really know how to use it, or what i may be used for, we reject it.
Google Wave is a good way to gather all our tools at one place. For example youcan use video/audio conferences with the help of a gadget.
It is a really powerful tool, but we have to “grow with it”.
Just my thoughts, anyone agrees?
iPad is easy to understand what to use for and HOW to use it, while wave is not.
Time will tell.
For Wave to succeed, Google has to do one very important thing: replace Exchange. If they can convince users at the enterprise level, the consumer market will follow suit.
control the mailbox control the collaboration platform…
Short answer: yes. It’s a flop.
Google Buzz seems to be what I thought Wave would be. Maybe Wave will go strictly enterprise. I’m not ready to put the nail in yet. At least not until Google opens their app store.
Good Article.
I like it, but no one is using it! They need something to attract people to it and make it more accessible. A big Face-Lift, More tools, and market the thing better!
Flop? I think that may be a bit strong.
However, I think that it’s maybe being market to the wrong audience (or not at all). It’s not a tool that the bulk of your average users, will make use of. Collaboration tools like that should really be geared/marketed towards businesses.
Is there the ability to invite guests to the collaboration? I haven’t used it much but, I never saw this option. That would be another must.
So . . . is it a flop? I don’t think so. Will it take off like Gmail or Docs? I wouldn’t put any money on that.
I vastly prefer chat to talking online. Unfortunately, Google Wave is the worst chat protocol I’ve ever tried.
If they have a target market in mind, I’m not sure who / what it is. I personally think that targetting anything at “businesses” is a bad idea, though. Enterprise software tends to be badly-designed code kludges, bought and used by separate people with differing requirements, and almost always beaten out by the tools people use at home.
As soon as I signed into wave it was overwhelming, almost like using a Mac for the first time.
Unlike a Mac, Google wave has a large learning curve. But it still has the potential to make it ‘big’.
Once Google can simplify wave, make it so you know what it’s capable of and make it so its intuitive, it’s going to be used by people like college and high school students for group projects, business people for collaborations, creative teams and everyone in between.
In short I don’t think it’s a flop, with some more work on Googles part it can make it big, within a somewhat limited audience that it.
I tried Google Wave twice and thats it. Live chat but i have to clik on button ? Gtalk rulez.
I’ve tried to use Wave a few times and each time I give up and try to give it more time thinking that it will get better. In general it seems like conversations just become a mess. I’m used to Basecamp and I thought for a while that Wave would be something like that so maybe it is a matter of just not being comfortable with the transition between the two. I think one of the things Google could do to make Wave better is to hide features and let you enable them if you really want them. I also think it goes to show that 37signals is on to something with their simplicity mantra.
Having said that, I don’t think Wave can be called a flop without a firm understanding of what Google’s intentions are. I can imagine a situation where Google is using Wave to test features for other products. In that case it may look like a flop but actually not be from their prospective if they gain insight into how they should shape some future products.
I also think that if Wave is a failure Google will still learn a great deal about … and use that for other products. Just as Apple learned from its failures and grew.
Andreas
It is just a preview. Google is just testing how people can use wave. I think it is really useful when you want to work collaboratively. Ofcourse it is not a conference killer. Looks like it can replace email for collaborating, but I am not sure if it can replace skype. But who knows, a wave extension might come which uses flash to do voice chat using wave. I think people are already working on that. Here is a list of google wave extensions: http://www.vinodlive.com/2009/10/07/google-wave-extensions-list/ . Already there are white board kind of extensions which work well.
Here is a interesting blog post regarding how wave can ease things: http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/02/creating-software-and-superheroes.html
I think it is – And I think Google thinks so too by releasing “Google Buzz” today (which looks more like Twitter)
I would wait to see how Google Buzz will develop. Remember also that wave is still in Beta and it is quite difficult to get an invitation at the moment. Wave is still complex and not well understood, maybe Buzz is a Wave premise.At the moment, my point of view is like techcrunch : http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/09/if-google-wave-is-the-future-google-buzz-is-the-present/
When I have rid here are is the same feel that I had on the first look at GWave .
Confusing , unusefull , pedantic . Condensing all in one word . WasteWare or better WasteWave :)
Wave is only meant to replace Mailing Lists, because its very ugly.
Wave is simply boring, you have to have a lot of people to talk with AND a lot of thing to speak about. I don’t have so many friends interested in technology to learn and take advantage of wave, and everything I have to speak about is on my blog or in Twitter -or both- so I don’t need a new way to communicate.
Same thing with Buzz. What I feel with this new tool is lazyness, I don’t want to mantain a new way to speak with people, I thing I already have enough ways to speak with my community, but I thing this will be a new way to reach the people, even when we seem to not have time to learn it. We’ll have to make room.
I love Google Wave!
I can’t use Google Wave because I have not been invited? bah!
I think GW has its purposes, but it just isn’t for everyone. So it will not replace email,
But for a tool to organize your thoughts and everyone elses easily, it works well.
Still a bit early to call it a flop, and unlike those other products Antonio had mentioned (Answers and Lively) Wave isn’t so singular in purpose as to become completely useless once people tire of one aspect of it… it’s a product with many aspects to it, and could be revolutionary (or at least evolutionary… or something… I hate English).
But note that I said “could,” because I feel like as undecided as the general public is about Wave, whether technical or not, Google is just as undecided about how they want to promote Wave. They tried the same tactic as they did with GMail — invite-only, just a little bit of info about what it does to stir the mystery — but when GMail dropped it filled a need that existed but people didn’t realize they needed (almost limitless space for e-mail). Google will need to explain why this is such a necessary device, why people would want to be able do all of that at once, and give us real-world examples; more explanation than was ultimately necessary for GMail.
At times I feel that Google has the innovation part down, but they still need to pick up a little bit in the promotion side. But, hey, maybe I’m wrong.
Google wave is not a flop, but it is not coorporate collaboration as for example IBM Lotus Connections is.
From the Google I/O presentation, Lars talks about how they “re-created email” and how Google Wave is a new and improved way of emailing. I agree, and see so many potential advantages but the way it is right now you have to use it independent of your email. The last thing anybody who’s trying to become more efficient needs is another place to go check for updates. I think they will find much more success if they make it so you can use it in conjunction with GMail. That way you can slowly merge into it and/or use it’s features when you need to. A great example of this is how so many of my clients and partners are excited about it, but none of us have used it because nobody is ever on there (and it’s still quite buggy).
I agree with island: “I think they will find much more success if they make it so you can use it in conjunction with GMail”.
Wave should have been introduced as an extension to GMail, based upon existing accounts.
Nobody cares for yet another mail/wave/whatever address.
Top or flop?
At least a missed opportunity .
Bingo! It must ultimately be integrated with Gmail AND, as someone else suggested, have the ability to include ‘guests’ in waves. I love the idea of Wave, but I’ve already spent a lot of mostly fruitless time trying to convince several people to try it out. The place is a ghost town right now, for me. Still keeping my fingers crossed.
I have grumbles on most google apps, even when the ideas are good the interfaces are often tricky and certainly not intuitive
I’ve used Google Wave successfully. Two clients, one designer, one PR person, one copywriter (me), across 3 countries. Best tool I’ve ever used for building rapport from scratch among people unused to working together. There are irritating features (can be overcome ). I think it needs guiding intelligence to ensure it stays useful. Any conversation can meander and frustrate. The Wave is a tool. All tools require skill, practice and learning. How about some detailed case studies?
I’m sure!
My first post about wave was something like: “it’s a Revolution! great!”
The second was: “is there anyone?”
Yesterday i deleted the wave chrome extension… :-(
I would use Wave a lot more if they actually made it available to my Google Apps account. The gmail account that I have to access for it is just my backup email, and rarely used.
well written. I never used wave. It doesn’t look user friendly to me.
Buzz is better but Google forcefully enabled it in all accounts and there is no way to get out of it.
I think it is much too early to begin asking if Google Wave is a flop or not.
After all, it is not even open to the public yet. For those who have seen it at all, they are seeing an unfinished preview, not a released product.
I for one can see a whole lot of potential with Wave. During Lars’ presentation he mentioned that the development team is still discovering new ways to use and apply Wave. Can you imagine what will happen when a few million people are using and discovering rather than a few hundred or a few thousand?
Saying that Wave is nothing more than a glorified chat is a terrible underestimation of its capabilities IMO.
I’m currently using Wave at work, we use it to store and organize informations and work. We are really satisfied, in despite of first difficulties now i can say it is the best solution to keep info organized but at the same time ready to be used without breaking your head in tons of documents or papers.
Yes, as you mention for collaborative usage its good, but cant use as a social network such as Twitter, Facebook and so on
as my view Wave, Buzz are flippable apps
I agree. Google Wave should be almost a “skin” option to gMail. I love Wave for project collaboration, but visiting different Google services all day get’s annoying. Voice, Wave, and Reader should all be infused into gMail, as they have done with Contacts and kinda’ with Calendar.
I think what may confuse many people is that they are expecting an application with some well defined purpose, and it is not, in my opinion, an application.
Rather, Google Wave is more like a tookkit that contains tools that users or groups of users may use in order to construct ad hoc applications on the fly, meeting whatever need the user, or group, may define.
I think that it was honestly over-hyped and over complicated for the market to accept. If they had rolled out a bare bones products and then put more features on later I think the implementation would have been better. As is the majority of people where overwhelmed with abilities and underwhelmed with product.
Although I agree with certain parts of the article, I do not think that Google Wave is a product that’s going to fail. If Google promotes it as a business tool, there might not be a promising future to Wave since Skype and other conference call tools are available but if they manage to integrate it into Gmail, I think Gmail users will find Wave useful since a lot of people use Google Docs and GChat collaborate with friends or associates. Google Wave, in a certain way, combines all these features and I think it would be a useful tool once people understand how to use it efficiently.
Google Wave isn’t the meaning of a standalone product. It is used as an experiment plattform to integrate this technique of live editing and conversation in Gmail and other products. That’s what a employee of Google said at the Suisse Cloud Conference some weeks ago.
Google Wave is a great product, no doubt in that. But it is somewhat unexplainable for average people. Since it is a communication tool common people has to be involved as a user of Wave. I think Google fails to explain what Wave is to common man.
The biggest problem with Google Wave.. the beta invitation system. I would have liked to use it for some projects either at work or in the classes I teach. I had 6-invites. I couldn’t get all the people I needed on it.
I waited for an invitation until I got the bad news that it was gonna be shelved…….damn…
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I think everyone on this thread has made good points. I don’t think Wave was made to substitute Gmail or Chat, but more than anything Google Groups. I agree that mailing lists are a very ineffective way to share information and ideas.
Certain functions of GW would be great to incorporate in other Gapps, namely Docs, Calendar, Reader, and Maps, especially the ability to playback changes that were made to documents and the voting gadget. In my ideal world, my group members (which would naturally be a group within my gmail’s address book contacts) and I have all our documents, brainstorms, and meeting transcripts on Docs. We can comment on these documents intermittently using Wave technology (including PDFs!), arriving at a final copy (and instead of version history and revision changes we use Wave playback to remember how we arrived and who offered what pieces). We can insert Maps and Calendar gadgets in these documents (as you can with Waves). While we are working on these documents, we can use Gvoice to talk if needed and can use GChat to ping others who are online to join in the editing or chat amongst ourselves. So basically the functionality of Wave in my opinion is to comment and track an idea’s progress, or provide a tool that allows many people to give their input when writing a report, brainstorming an event, preparing a seminar, etc. And this leaves email to what I would like to use it for, being thoughtful personal correspondence and story-telling.