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Google Wave: Disappointed Six Months Later

It has been six months since Google announced Google Wave. I last wrote about it then. It has been three months since I have got an account. Back then, I was very excited about the product. I wrote:

“Wave will unite instant messaging with email and wrap it all with a fusion of information based services that ensure that we will never look back. It is the next generation of communications on the Internet and every other company will rush to try to keep up with it.”

I am sorry to say that I remain a bit underwhelmed in terms of the adoption arc of Wave. My experience, which seems to be very common, is that it does not present itself in such a way that using it is made fun, intuitive, or useful.

Here is a great story about this very issue:

TechRadar.com – The idiot’s guide to Google Wave – Because, admit it – you still have no idea what it’s all about

Google started sending out invites to its Google Wave collaboration service back in September, and following a clamour for invites, the service was met with a resounding "huh?" from many people who tried it.

But Wave is a revolutionary new way to keep in contact with people and collaborate on documents and could completely replace email.

To be sure, it is a cool tool. It seems like it should really be “the next thing”, but somehow seems to lack an instruction manual. A few weeks after the iPhone arrived, there were hundreds of books on the subject at your local book store. Six months after Wave came, there is yet to be a best seller on the topic. To be frank, I am frustrated because I want to be the early adopter here, but right now, I can’t see this replacing any other product that I use, nor can I see me investing the time to carve out a new slice of time for it.

Maybe someday I will look back on this post,from Wave, and laugh, but today… I expected more from Google Wave.

Have you used Google Wave? Do you believe the hype? Is this a game changer? What has been your experience with it?

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for January 7, 2010 ©Scott Coughlin .

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This entry was posted by Scott Coughlin on January 7, 2010 at 6:22 am, and is filed under Business of IT, Information Age, Information Technology. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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#1 written by andy 2 years ago

Online collaborating and teaching can work, If you have trust and the right tools.
I recently tried http://www.showdocument.com – good app for uploading documents and working on them in real-time.
Most file types are supported and it needs no installation. – andy

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#2 written by Tyler 2 years ago

To be fair, it’s still in a preview release mode, which is sort of nebulous given that Google routinely releases things in Beta and keeps them for months or even years(Granted this has been happening less recently). That would be why, in my opinion, there are not many books on the shelves so to speak. While they’re not difficult to come by at this point, you do still need an invitation to try out the platform as well, meaning there’s an extra step to jumping in rather than simply navigating to Google’s login pages.

I’m no expert in writing code or developing for anything really, but from what I’ve read one of the appealing aspects Wave is that it is more than the web application, but a protocol and an offered system for people to use on intranet systems and hosted on their own servers so it isn’t necessary to have everything pass through Google’s hands at all times. Certainly from my use of it at the moment it is very resource intensive and really works best for the real-time aspects when one has a good speedy connection to work through.

I use it every day for some things which could be used in instant messaging, but the appeal of a character by character communication feels like a better back and forth dynamic than staged sentences/paragraphs like in an instant message.

All of that said, I’m not certain it will be a revolution in communication. I think it has some potential for such a thing, though so do other platforms such as Mozilla’s Raindrop. My hope’s with Google because I’m simply a little biased in favor of them from my experiences thus far with their products.

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#3 written by Jason Kolb 2 years ago

The client is very rough right now, and that throws a lot of people off. What Google has done is put a simply functional client out there on top of this protocol, and stepped back to see how people would use it.

There are many clients being written for Wave right now in anticipation of Google opening up federation. You will get it once you see a good client.

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#4 written by Scott Coughlin 2 years ago

I am certainly willing to give it another chance. My only concern is that, in the tech world, things rarely get more popular or useful… only less. Of course, if anyone can keep momentum behind a product, it would be Google.

Thank you so very much for the readership and commenting.

I greatly appreciate it.

-Scott

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#5 written by Scott Coughlin 2 years ago

Thank you so very much for the readership and commenting.

This was a wonderful comment. Thank you. I really appreciated you sharing how you use Wave in a personal sense. Great to know and happy that it is working for you.

I also thought that your comments about the revolution in communication were insightful.

I greatly appreciate it.

-Scott

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#6 written by Scott Coughlin 2 years ago

Thank you so very much for the readership and commenting.

I greatly appreciate it.

-Scott

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#7 written by Shaun Schurkamp 2 years ago

I like your writing style thanks for the info -cheers-

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#8 written by Ann 8 months ago

Great – I should definitely pronounce, impressed with your site. I had no trouble navigating through all the tabs and related info ended up being truly easy to do to access. I recently found what I hoped for before you know it at all. Reasonably unusual. Is likely to appreciate it for those who add forums or anything, website theme . a tones way for your customer to communicate. Excellent task..

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