R.I.P Google Wave we barely knew ye: Why Google Wave Failed

Its funny how people only really appreciate something once its dead and gone. Now that google wave is getting shut down I'm beginning to realize how much of a missed opportunity it really was.

In 140 characters or less, Google Wave was all about streamlining how we communicate and collaborate over the internet.

It took the best features from various conventional communication models like sms text messaging, e mail, wikis, blogs, etc., and converged them into one seamless multimedia conversation thread. Everything was hosted in the cloud where any number of people could participate in the conversation in real time, depending on who had access. In terms of its functionality Google Wave was on point, and yet, despite all this, it failed. But why?

Google Wave failed because of two key reasons: an insufficient user base and poor design execution. First I'll focus on the insufficient user base problem. In order to understand this problem you have to step back and look at the larger social media context from which it stems from. When it comes to social media in general Google seems to be fighting a losing battle. They have made countless attempts to become relevant in the space with products like Knoll, Buzz, more recently Google Me, and of course Google Wave. But no matter what they do, they can't even seem to make a dent in Facebook's empire, which now has 500 million active users and shows no signs of stopping. Even if Google does eventually build a better way to organize social media and communication, it will always be relegated to a redundant, me too brand, destined for obscurity, at least for the forseeable future, when compared to Facebook. Google Wave was no exception to this.

People are getting burnt out on having to manage multiple social media networks that do essentially the same thing. even if Google Wave was a technically better product, its too much of a hassle to switch because everybody's friends are already on Facebook. So unless Google Wave somehow sparked a mass exodus of Facebook users to wave, user adoption will remain minimal. In addition to the Facebook problem, there were also other limiting factors to mainstream user adoption. For example when I first got started with Wave, I expected it to have tighter integration through Gmail, but unfortunately, I had to access Wave separately. Google tried to make the process more convenient by automatically importing all of my gmail contacts, but unless my contacts also had a wave account, I couldn't talk to them. So after all was said and done I finally got into Wave, and, like most people who decided to try it out, had absolutely no one to talk to (other than complete strangers). Although on the flip side If you were an avid Gmail user with a lot of contacts who were also using Wave then you wouldn't have had a problem finding people to talk to. However, the fact of the matter is that these people represent a very small minority. In short, most people's friends are all on Facebook, and even if they were in Gmail, hardly any were in Wave.

As far as design was concerned, Google Wave was pretty poorly executed. Good design is crucial for the overall success of any product or service, especially one like Wave. Unfortunately, Google treats design as having little to no relevance at all. Google wave is a very disruptive technology, and naturally, it takes some getting used to. that being the case, it was imperative that Google Wave be designed in an aesthetically pleasing and user friendly way so that the transition was less intimidating for new adopters. even if the design choices had been purely aesthetic and had nothing to do with the actual functionality of the product a slicker interface could have still enhanced the "perceived" usability of the technology. Put simply Google Wave was fugly and thus, apparently too complicated for the average end user. Google Wave had so much potential at least in terms of its core functionality, it just needed more polish and more users to be successful.

Ultimately, as ambitious as Google is, I don't think the company will be satisfied until it comes close to at least being competitive with Facebook in social media market share. As of February 2010 Google has 65.5% search engine market share in the U.S according to a recent Comscore statistic. But dominating the social media landscape in a way that is anything remotely close to how they have been dominating search, may prove to be an insurmountable task in a world already dominated by Facebook. As stated earlier,  Facebook now has an estimated 500 million active users and counting. Google Wave on the other hand, topped out at around one million active users before beginning its death spiral. In other words, R.I.P Google Wave, Google Buzz, etc etc. This includes any other social media projects they may have up their sleeve. They may as well all be dead on arrival. Which begs the question, now that Google Wave is gone, are we going to be stuck with the old fragmentated communication paradigms forever? Not necessarily, because the core idea behind Google Wave may very well be reincarnated as Facebook Messages; A new and improved unified inbox. This time in a much more marketable package. So the silver lining in all of this is ironically Facebook. Perhaps they will succeed where google wave failed, ushering in a new era of streamlined communication.