Google Shitcans Wave

Glenn Fleishman on Google’s pulling the plug on Wave:

Wave’s primary problem is that it was a mishmash of too many separate elements crammed into one bulging interface. Was Wave email? Not quite, although it could handle notifications. Was it an annotation system used to mark up documents? Yes, but in an odd way that was hard to follow. Was it a wiki or a simultaneous editor? Yes and no. And so on.

It’s always seemed remarkable to me that they even shipped Wave in the first place. Interesting technology? Sure. But as a product, it was almost impossible to describe. When has a new product been successful when no one knows or understands what they’re supposed to use it for? It was the most Google-y product ever — no other company would have or could have shipped it.

★ Wednesday, 4 August 2010