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Google Wave Shuts Down; Google Refuses to Admit it Sucked

posted on August 4, 2010


It promised so much…

A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

But, in the end, it just plain sucked…

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.

Some may say, “Google Wave was just ahead of its time,” but that’s just sucking up to Google. Google Wave was one of those ideas where the company starts with “hey, this is cool, this will change everything” instead of “hey, what problem can we solve for people?”

The worst part? Even Google won’t admit it failed. Its post title?

Update on Google Wave

You just closed it down because no one used it. Man-up and admit it!


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  • James

    “Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked”…
    I think that means “we’re closing it down because no one used it”

    What more do you want to consider google manned-up?

    • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

      See, you had to interpret it! You proved my point. ;-)

      Also, my point is the title of the post. Why didn’t Google say: “We’re Closing Google Wave”

  • http://www.Un-Marketing.com Scott Stratten

    Bwahahaaa you’re awesome. And it’s true. It did suck. And I tried so hard to like it.

    • http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

      Thanks Scott. Yeah it did.

      We all make stuff that sucks, but apparently Google has an aversion to making that admission.

    • http://www.socialmediamercenary.com Leslie A Joy

      You’re a step ahead of me then. I didn’t even try. My first reaction was that:
      a.) The user-interface was farther from intuitive than New York City is from Austrailia.
      b.) It seemed like what Wave was trying to do could be more easily accomplished by using a project management app…or Google Talk group chat…or Google Docs…or even Google Groups.
      Although to be completely fair, I do see how it could be excellent to use for mastermind type groups. But I’m not a part of one, so Google Wave just ended up being one more place I had to go to check for work.

  • http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/ Michael VanDeMar

    Andy, I bet if you taunt them enough they will do some sort of grand re-opening, just to try and prove you wrong. :)

  • http://wavelook.com WaveLook

    Wave is not dead.

    At http://wavelook.com, we’ve created the first and only Wave client for Outlook and our wave web app is in private beta.

  • Andrew Sittermann

    It’s a real shame. The real-time multi-user apps supported by wave have a great future. We have a Google Wave travel-planner called “Travel WithMe”,
    and people love the real-time experience.

    Sensing that wave might not be going places, we’ve put it on facebook now as well, but still with Google Wave’s realtime features. It’s at apps.facebook.com/travel-withme.

  • Henri

    That’s too bad. It is an awesome application! We just started an Android game development company and we keep all of the documentation, protocols of meetigns, design documentations etc in there.

    Gotta move all the information somewhere else before the end of the year.

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