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back to article Apathy kills Google's new-age Wave

Google is closing down development of its new-age communications platform Wave due to lack of interest. The Chocolate Factory said Wednesday that it's stopping development of Wave as a stand-alone product because of a lack of user adoption. The Wave site is being put on life support until the end of the year, with the …

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  1. Barry Lane 1
    Happy

    Shame, really

    My disabled daughter's trust manages all her day-to-day admin work via Wave, keeping trustees, family and friends in touch. The trust's regular meetings are minuted and available to everyone who has an interest in my daughter's care and wellbeing.

    Sure, Wave is a bit clunky and it could do with a little streamlining here and there, but it's useful and free. Where Google is happy creating its own "Evil Empire" in some areas, it has been positively cuddly and kindly in others, and Wave will be missed greatly in this household. Not perfect, it's true, but a handy tool that has kept those involved apprised of my daughter's health and care requirements and has, to my knowledge, kept prying eyes away from confidential information.

    We could use Facebook or one of several other methods of staying in touch, of course, but Wave's very obscurity has, for us at least, been one of its chief strengths.

    Sad to see it go, frankly, but pleased that Google gave it a go.

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  2. Parax

    Short sighted..

    So goofgle (I'll leave that typo as its far to appropriate!) said to themselves what if email didn't exist? How would we make it today? and voila Wave was born...

    Anyway what Google Failed to realise that releasing an alternative email system would probably only work IF email didn't exist in the first place.... so just as has been posted above. Wave was always second to email and just extra hassle. What google should have done was integrate Gmail into wave so that there was just ONE application, with multiple types of email/wave threads.

    Wave was good, but in the end it was too much hassle to manage multiple apps. In the same way that people dont have myspace bebo twitter and facebook.. but instead just stick to one.

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  4. Jerome 0
    Stop

    Wave

    Google Wave is the most useful new service I've seen on the web in many years. It's confusing at first, but all it takes is an ounce of imagination to see how it can be used.

    Now my band uses it to plan everything we do. When it gets shut down, we'll find it hugely annoying to go back to some archaic combo of emails, attachments and IMs.

    Google needs a little dedication to their products. There has been a distressing trend recently of them having great ideas that are ahead of their time, but then cancelling them before the world has a change to catch up. Thank God that didn't happen with Android.

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  5. Sam Therapy
    Coat

    What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?

    I don't know and I don't care.

    Coat/door enactment scenario.

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  6. Andrew Sittermann
    Stop

    It's a real shame.

    It's a real shame. The real-time multi-user apps supported by wave have a great future. We have a Google Wave travel-planner called "Travel WithMe",

    and people love the real-time experience.

    Sensing that wave might not be going places, we've put it on facebook now as well, but still with Google Wave's realtime features. It's at apps.facebook.com/travel-withme.

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  7. BorkedAgain
    Unhappy

    Shame...

    ...Rather liked it myself. Liked the collaboration, the ability for a newcomer to the wave to replay its history, the instant translation robot and the whole idea. Never quite reached a critical mass of colleagues or friends to make it actually useful, and I rather suspect that's what put paid to it in our case.

    That, and the lack of integration with "old-fashioned" email.

    It'd be nice to see it resurface in slicker form in Gmail or Google Docs or similar. For people who will miss the collaborative aspect of it, you could try using Google Spreadsheets to collaborate with; it's not perfect, but it's free and easy... ;)

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  8. P.W. Dragoix
    Pint

    how to make waves when the wind drops?

    Google Earthquake. about f. time.

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  9. Randall Shimizu
    Thumb Down

    Wave issues

    Google was interesting, but I disliked the idea that you had to have a separate email address for it. The other problem was that Google did not see all that committed to it. Google needed to do a lot more to promote Wave. I think Google's decision to abandon Wave so quickly demonstrates their lack of commitment.

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