I think Google Wave already passed his preview stage. Actually it already passed it’s beta, live and hype stage. Worse, it might be dead already.
Can a product as cool (gool..) as Google Wave can die so soon without being released to the big crowd? I just read a Wave from someone who said ‘is it dead yet?’, he might be right, or isn’t he? I’ll give you some reasons why the big G lost this one already.
Crappy usability
The whole interface has a Gmail feeling, which is good. But the placement of sub-screens (especially when they are minimized), the unclear menu options, wavelets everywhere (even for the settings) are not really helping the acceptance of this new product. Did you ever check the new scrollbars, nice design but crappy to use.
Most of this is because we’re just not used to this standard, so it’s cool to see but if the mass cannot use the product because their IQ doesn’t reach 100, the product becomes useless.
Lot’s of errors
Going into big waves is horrible, they take hours to load but even days to scroll through them. So please don’t invite your mom to join the wave. Before you’ll even notice the wave gets filled with details about upcoming Christmas, you cousin or how bad the neighbors behaved and you wave becomes so slow that you’ll never be able to send a reply back to your mom.
Oh wait, that can be a good thing either..
It’s slow, really really slow
Did I already mentioned that is was slow? Not just a big wave is slow, the entire programs loads like a big pile of sh*t going down the toilet (sorry for that). Nowadays when I want to load the website, I even start up my Android for a nice game of Mahjong. When I’ve finished my 3rd game, finally something shows up on my screen. I don’t want to spend 2010 on waiting for apps to load, that ain’t a good example off working in the cloud!
Unclear how and where to use for
It’s something like emailing with the speed of Twitter and the possibilities of chat. Lost me? That’s exactly what I mean. Although it looks cool, it also gives you a bad feeling about what it is about, why the hassle? So you use it once, twice if you are really geeky, but then it end with a pure dissatisfaction. Yeah your account died to, join the club.
Ugly and stupid gadgets
In your wavelets you’ll have the possibility to add gadgets, which can be used by all readers of the wave. There are gadgets like mini conference rooms (you can even see each other;)), drawing (yeah you can draw together, WOW!), showing maps and polls (don’t push me) and other fancy stuff.
The problem is that this fancy stuff makes the waves slower, are as ugly as.. , screw up the layout even more and mostly contain stuff from the 80s.
Thanks Google for bringing Paint back to live in the cloud, can’t wait for Word Perfect!
Bot’s in your contact list
You have the possibilities to have real time translation on sentences you type (although speaking of realtime such a slow speed might not be realtime, that’s for you to decide), also you can chat with bots and ‘god’ knows what else. But everytime you add such a service, it shows up in your contact list as a new contact.
Why should you have 10 bots in your contacts, while the real people you want to Wave with are buried deeply somewhere in your contacts overview.
Terminology used by l33t
Sorry but introducing new terminology like Waves, wavelets, blips, blaps and blops isn’t really cool, it’s annoying. Even I have a hard time to understand and fully read articles about Google Wave terminology and in my opinion I’m not in the same target audience as my 90 year old granny, so I guess she will never understand what’s happening on her screen. She is a fan of Facebook though…
Great!
Maybe I should bring my first aid kit and try to save this high quality piece of technology, but I probably need some more people to help me save it.
I’ve some invites left, so if you really care to save the Wave from its cardiac arrest then send me an email. I’ll will send you the invite via Google Wave. (yes that means that I have an account myself and my template is black, deathly black).
More information on what Google Wave actually is can be found in the article on Mashable.
I think they launched it on the wrong time. More and more people now know how they can brand there name and product with Facebook, Twitter, enz. To much of the same. If they launched it 2 years back it would be a succes.
Could be true as well indeed. I’m thinking of Wave in a sense of replacing Email, chat etc, and not specifically for contacting new people or following new subjects, although that’s also a possible use of Google Wave.
In either case it is again “Unclear how and where to use for”, too many possibilities seems to make the product scary instead of usefull, it seems..
bugger— wave was such a brilliant idea on paper (or goog doc if you prefer).
it’s limited release wasn’t even done properly— I found that the people who had it, had absolutely no need for it.
Google should have either reserved a release for people who have Google Apps, Corporations, or done a similtaneous release to public when it was ready.
i’d hate to see google scrap it— it has sooooo much potential.