| Date: | 2010-08-05 08:54 |
|---|---|
| Author: | Stefano |
| category: | Google Wave, Opinion |
| slug: | google-stops-wave-development |
Google decided to interrupt further development of Wave. The service itself remains active, though. I appear not to be good at predictions: a year ago, I expected Wave to take over email definitely. To be fair, a condition I added was for the server to be made public for third parties, something that never happened and is not going to happen, but to be even more fair, if this had happened the result would not have been different today, I think.
I'm not particularly sad. I subscribed to the beta, and tested Wave as soon as I got access. After some days of loneliness, some friends were allowed in, and we started using it for communication and collaborative writing. Wave is technically amazing, but once you use it for a while, you realize it's not an email, not a wiki, not a chat. Its main characteristic is NOT to be something, and the final product is impractical for use on each task.
Despite is intrinsic lack of success, Wave gave me a sound demonstration of two important facts: that an impressive technical product is not also a successful consumer product; and that usability of a consumer end-product comes from specialization for use cases.