Google Wave
Perhaps Google should come up with a jingle, and maybe it should go something like, “Another one bites the dust”. Yes, another innovative, highly acclaimed Google geek tool has officially been taken off life support. Google has pulled the plug on Google Wave and will now wait as it quietly dies.
If you are like many people, you probably heard about Google Wave but did not even know what it was. Simply put, it was a collaboration tool, but what made it so special is that users could see that collaboration in real time. They could share documents and edit them live while communicating with each other. Google said that it is what email would look like if it had been invented today. But alas, email was invented many years ago, and people are not so quick to adopt new technology with nondescript names.
People who used Google Wave loved it. It made life a little more interesting, and it made working a little more productive. But it was not a money maker, and despite how it sometimes may seem, Google is a business that needs to make money.
“But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked,” said Senior Vice President of Operations, Urs Holzle on the Google blog.
By the end of the year, Google Wave will be dead. But Google is not your mother’s software company, and for organizations that are comfortable with the concept of free and open source software, death is not the end. Google has already released the source code of “many of Wave’s innovations”, and it stands to reason that, if some people out there really valued it, they will resurrect Google Wave, hopefully with a better name.
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Tags: Google, Google Wave
