Is Google Wave a Bust?

I just checked my Google Wave account after forgetting about it for two or three weeks. I was shocked to find that of all the Waves I was subscribed to, most of which are law oriented, there were only two new postings in all that time.

And at that, it was the post of a translator widget with the accompanying demonstration of the translation of that same message into Chinese - so that really only counts as one post.

Just a few short weeks ago, Wave seemed like the future of business communications.  Google limited the uses to a few privileged invitees and their friends (I was one of them, though I'm not entirely sure why!).  People were clamoring to get one of the invitations.  The initial reports sung the hype...pass me the kool-aide, would you?  And now...not much seems to be happening there.  As The Milwaukee SEO notes, "No one can figure out how to use it effectively."

That pretty much sums up my experience.  I was hyped about Google Wave's potential and so were well respected legal technologists like Bob Ambrogi though Bob stated right from the start that it would be a long uphill road before lawyers actually adopt Google Wave.  But, not only lawyers, people in general seem to be left scratching their heads about Wave.  A Google search (remember, Google is a trademark, not a verb!), of "Google Wave Flop" or "Google Wave Failure" will give you hundreds of thousands of hits.

In actually using Wave I found myself continually asking, how is this making my life better than email and Google Docs?  I tried using it, with some success, collaborating with a co-presenter for an upcoming conference.  While we both found Wave fun for getting the ball rolling - when it came down to actually getting the ideas down for our talk and materials written, we were using email and Google Docs.

What Google Docs cannot seem to answer, at this point, is "How is this making my life/work better/more efficient?"  Honestly, I don't know and that's why I fell back on things that do, in fact, made my conference speaking preparation better and more efficient - the speedy communication of email and the collaborative power of Google Docs.

I still like the potential I see in Wave.  It does make sense to have a more interactive, multimedia, collaborative means of doing business communication.  Google Wave, however, just doesn't seem ready for prime time.  It might have potential down the road, even with simple additions like notifications of changes, integration with Google Docs, even just a client to manage Wave (in the way that, say, Tweet Deck manages your Twitter Account).  Until there is further development, however, Google Wave just does not seem ready for prime-time.

- Peter H. Berge.

Comments (2)

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Newton - Apple Tablet
written by Peter Berge, January 21, 2010

And sometimes unripe products return later and fully developed. I'm hoping the Apple Tablet is the fully developed Newton!

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Concurring
written by Seth Leventhal, January 21, 2010

Peter - I whole-heartedly agree with your take. Like Apple's Newton and a host of other products before their time, it seems to me that Wave simply isn't ripe -- a combination of the demand not being there and the product not being there.

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