Google Cuts Wave Project

We were a little surprised when Google announced that they will not be continuing to develop the Google Wave project last week. If you are not familiar with Google Wave, it is actually an email collaboration tool that will supposedly change the way people uses email.

While it’s hard to think how much different you can do with emails these days other than changing the fonts or adding a picture, Google Wave taps on gadgets within each wave to insert features into emails, for example you could add a poll into your wave, you could rewind your wave to see the modifications made to the original, play voicemails on it, translate to a different language in realtime, and many more interesting gadgets. There are tonnes of gadgets developed by Google or 3rd party users and companies you could utilize to create the ultimate email experience.

Or probably not. It’s a wonderful idea but many have quoted it as far too ambitious, and changing the way people are use to using their emails for work may just seem too much of a hassle. I personally have tried Google Wave even before the beta was released and although it feels like a good idea for techies, it is just too overwhelming to use for end-users. There isn’t a central where you can easily search for a gadget you want to use and it gets way too sluggish sometimes with the amount of data transferring in and out of Google Wave servers. The hassle for users to get used to Google Wave’s layout and feel maybe the reason for the lack of followers, everyone simply try it and once the novelty dies out nobody returns to use it again. It’s simply too revolutionary for it’s own good.

I do however wish Google hadn’t terminate the Wave project so early into the game, it’s barely a year since its testing phase and they have given up already. Reinventing the email, in my opinion, takes time and for that purpose alone it is still worth a shot to keep it going. Sadly, the results clearly isn’t good enough to keep developing it.