Google drops Wave

August 5, 2010 | article by Ken Thompson in New Technologies (7)

BBC News reports that Google is dropping Google wave due to lack of users. Wave combined e-mail, instant messaging and the ability to collaborate on documents in real-time and was described as "how e-mail would look if it were invented today". Its a big surprise for a product that looked like a game changer and just like mobile picture messaging serves as a reminder of the risks of getting too far ahead of your market.

google wave

According to Google chief executive Eric Schmidt:

"It's a very clever product. You never know why it didn't work. Our policy is we try things. Remember we celebrate our failure. This is a company where it is okay to try something that is very hard and not have it be successful."

To read Google drops Wave because of lack of users

About Ken Thompson

Ken Thompson is an expert practitioner in the area of bioteaming, swarming, virtual enterprise networks, virtual professional communities, virtual teams and management simulation and has published two landmark books:

Bioteams: High Performance Teams Based on Nature's Best Designs

The Networked Enterprise: Competing for the future through Virtual Enterprise Networks

Ken writes the highly popular bioteams blog which has over 600 articles on all aspects of bioteams (aka organizational biomimicry) - in other words how human groups can learn from nature's best teams.

Ken is also founder of an exciting European technology company Swarmteams which provides unique patent-pending bioteaming technologies for all shapes and sizes of groups, social networks, business clusters, virtual/mobile communities and enterprises. Swarmteams enables groups to be more responsive and agile by fully integrating their mobile phones and the web with bioteam working techniques.

The latest Swarmteams implementation is SwarmTribes which helps social object owners (e.g. musicians/bands, sports teams, film-makers) and good cause sponsors (e.g. Volunteering, Environmental, Public Health) to form unique collaborations with their fans/supporters for mutual benefit.

Tags: google, google wave

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6 Comments | Leave a comment

Ken,

I was using Google Wave with lawyers during our OBA international phone conferences. Everyone liked it. But few knew what it was before we invited them to the wave. It worked for us.

I believe Google said it will absorb the technology into other apps. I look forward to this in the near future. Frankly. I'm tired of paying for expensive apps/technology solutions that are mediocre. Google, at least, creates above average to great apps for free!

Jorge
Founder of The Online Bar
http://obacard.me/jorge

Posted by: Jorge Colón | August 6, 2010 11:20 PM

Thanks Jorge. I agree. Google provides not just free apps but robust, innovative, high quality ones. The more I explore the complete google product set the more impressed I am in terms of its depth and quality (thats one of the things that inspired me to create the youbidfast.com blog - blogger, google alerts, analytics, webmaster tools....)

I am sure wave will come back in some new shape or form

KEN

Posted by:

Ken | August 7, 2010 9:13 AM

Waves is lost for the moment but the same usuable technology is still there.

Shareflow http://www.zenbe.com/shareflow provides great usability (but at a price)

and

Etherpad - that was/is the greatest online collaboration toool and which google took over to integrate the technology into waves is open source, and whilst etherpad is not supported, the open source closnes are there and supported. The best of these is http://www.titanpad.com (sign up for teams)

Etherpad technology is an ABSOLUTE indispensible product. Lets hope Google brings it back in another form/product now Waves is on ice.

Posted by: Alec Dorling | August 9, 2010 10:46 PM

many Thanks alec - excellent contrribution - ken

Posted by:

Ken | August 10, 2010 8:36 AM

Google wave is really a good tool for collaboration but I am also using proof hub for manage and collaborate my work. It’s really a good package for working and easy to use.

Posted by: alvin | October 5, 2010 6:36 AM

I think he's article is really good and I agree with his opinion. Good for him!

Posted by: Cazare Sovata | December 8, 2011 3:10 PM

Bioteams Books Reviews

Organisational teams: thin slice for responsiveness

January 22, 2007 | article by Ken Thompson in Book Reviews (37)

Humans and animals do not need complete information to act; they can operate on various clues provided there is a sufficient context. Organizational teams can also use this thin slicing technique in conjunction with short messaging to enhance their performance. Malcolm Gladwell’s introspective book Blink digs deep into the abyss of human cognition to illustrate the human ability to think at a subconscious level. The idea of thin slicing is used where one is introduced to only a few snippets of information which lead to a series of conclusions based on moments of rapid cognition – an ability claimed to be intrinsically dormant in most humans. By bioteams guest author Max Bhanabhai.

Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK

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Click here to check all Bioteams book reviews