Ask any Google Wave user and they will confirm that Wave is a very useful tool for working in collaboration on projects. It’s powerful, fast and has a host of superb features.
So, why did Google announce yesterday that they were ceasing development of Google Wave?
The simple answer from Google, was that “we have not seen the level of adoption we would have liked.” In other words, it attracted very few regular users.
The bigger question, and one that I believe a lesson can be gained from, is why did so few people use such a powerful, free service?
The Google Wave demo video was over an hour long!
Google Wave, like Google Buzz, came out of the blocks with a problem, which lost it a huge amount of early traction. The initial Google Wave demo video, ran for over an hour – which was stupid. People wanted to see something that showed them how to get started with Wave quickly, yet they had to wade through a shockingly poor, over long presentation instead.
By the time the problem was fixed, and the dumb-ass video replaced with something more appropriate, Wave had already lost millions of early adopters.
These early adopters (people like you and me) are the one’s who typically open new online services up to the non-geeks.
Google Wave User Interface was poor
The initial user interface was also far from instinctive, making it a lot harder to get things done, than needed to be the case. In fact, lifehacker co-founder Gina Trapani was so frustrated by the lack of user information available, that she wrote a very useful book; The Complete Google Wave Guide – Which I’m guessing you will be able to get at a very reduced rate soon!
The worst part about the demise of Google Wave, is that it genuinely was a very good tool, which failed largely because of piss-poor launch marketing and a badly designed user interface.
Ask any Google Wave user and they will confirm that Wave is a very useful tool for working in collaboration on projects. It’s powerful, fast and has a host of superb features. So, why did Google announce yesterday that they were ceasing development of Google Wave?
The simple answer from Google, was that “we have not seen the level of adoption we would have liked.” In other words, it attracted very few regular users.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jim Connolly, TheTechNewsBlog, Karen Skidmore, Joe, Vimlaksh Gautam and others. Vimlaksh Gautam said: RT @jimconnolly: Google Wave’s demise: How to screw up a great product! http://bit.ly/9ZE2B1 [...]
The promo video was long indeed, but not a major factor to hinder adoption. The interface I agree was not helpful at all, hiding many of g’ wave’s features. Above all though, wasn’t it kind of a ‘solution waiting for a problem’? It was a far fetched target (overly ambitious) that it would replace Lotus notes, even though it had gained no significant traction.
Agree with Jason & Jim – great tool, bags of future potential – just ahead of it’s time, and too much fuss over the initial release, with all that “having to have an invite” frenzy they created!
Goes to show even the Big G can screw up marketing sometimes!
I think one of the biggest things that killed Wave was that it was never taken out of the sandbox. Despite Google’s promise that you could integrate Wave with anything, as far as I know it was never allowed to do that. The only way you could use Wave was with other Wave users.
[...] why did the most hyped new technology of 2009 fail to take off? I think it was mainly the fault of poor launch strategy and lack of integration with existing Google products. Rumour has it the best bits of the [...]
[...] manageable, and allowed everyone to see what was happening in real time. Jim Connolly also found Wave to be useful, and was dismayed at its [...]
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Google Wave's demise: How to screw up a great product! http://ow.ly/2wwfH
Google Wave's demise: How to screw up a great product! – http://b2l.me/akemcr
[...] Is it just me or is Google trying to do too much. Google Talk. Google TV. Google Buzz. Google Wave. Now there is Google Instant [...]
[...] ability to focus and plan as a cohesive unit? Google have shown us this year, with the death of Google Wave and the less than successful launch of Google Buzz, that they too can produce very good services, [...]
Even Google can screw things up http://bit.ly/cpFmG6
NO! NOOOO!
God I loved google wave, I actually found that everything worked great for me. I was even okay with the interface.
The problem was nobody knew about it! I could never find anyone to do stuff on it. If they wanted it to succeed they should of promoted it more. Hell I remember when gmail started they had it plastered everywhere. The problem I think is that they had competing interests. At the same time they were launching their replacement for email, they were promoting their email just as much or more. If they wanted it to succeed they should of stopped promoting their email and go full out on google wave.
There’s only one thing to learn here. If your going to make what you call a replacement for something you’re already invested heavily in then promote it as a replacement. When the same company has two products that are competing, one is going to when. And that’s probably the one that already has a userbase.