Comment by SkyMarshal
16 years ago
I think they're killing it too quickly. It's not like it was a resounding failure.
Those who have adapted it and taken the time to really learn and use it swear by it, which strongly implies there is opportunity for it. It's not so much a product failure as a launch or marketing failure.
Pandora.com, for example, had similar problems getting initial traction, but stuck it out long enough to get over the hump (thanks in large part to iOS and Android), and are now one of the hot 'new' things.
Sometimes I think you can kill promising products too quickly in an attempt to stick with 'fail early/fail often'.
Feel the same about killing it too soon. But then Google is Google and probably judge success in adoption rate base on the results with Gmail and Chrome.
My guess is there is an up coming project (Google Me?) that shares some similarity with Wave but is targeting the friends&family group rather than workgroup. They probably will not outsource Wave as some of its tech will find its way to this upcoming project.