Why Google Wave needs a major overhaul

I find that about 1/2 of the objections in this post have todo with cultural, not technical issues.

Seems to me that wave needs an overhaul at the product level. If I can't quickly discover compelling uses of the product then I think the product is flawed. It feels a lot like wave was developed in a vacuum compared to Google's other products. For instance, I don't think many people inside Google use wave, which is the complete opposite of gmail, gchat/gtalk, calendar and docs. That should be a significant signal right there.

I wish Google had used the time and effort they put into Wave instead to beef up Google Docs. To me Google Docs itself could be a great collaborative tool if the applications weren't so crippled and basic. Integrate it with G-Chat, add a OneNote style information management tool and make Docs/Spreadsheets at least as functional as an early 90's Windows 3.x Office suite. I'm really baffled at the lack of attention Google Docs is getting while all these new Google services spring up. Someone (probably Microsoft) is going to eat their lunch. I admire that Google is trying to push forward with a new way of doing things via Wave but ignoring what users actually want today, a good collaborative office package, and conceding the market to someone else is just a dumb move for an advertising company to make. You gotta give the people what they want.

Seriously, this article ignores the important aspect of Wave, something that it doesn't ignore for something like Email. Email is useless without other people using Email. So is a chat program. Wave is useless without other people as well. This is why Wave isn't based around Google, but rather, a protocol that anyone can use.

Consider that email was first 'invented' in the early 70's, and SMTP in the early 80's, emails adoption speed was comparable to that of a glacier in terms of todays adoption speeds.

Wave is such a big undertaking that even Google will have to work hard to move it forward. But consider for a moment how much work is involved with email, and yet, today, how easy it is to integrate with your average website. Indeed, we don't think about how much is built on email. It's wide spread use lets us forget that it would be useless if no one else used it.

So yes, while the Google Wave client is still in its infancy, and Wave itself is still an early idea, the idea and what it represents is major. Email, IM, Social Networking, etc, won't be replaced by Wave, much like none of these replaced Email as a means to communicate. Rather, Wave will become apart of these means of communication. Wave is the protocol that allows for this communication.

Something as simple as Hacker News comments could easily be a wave, and it wouldn't require us, the users to do anything, yet we could benefit greatly from Wave being apart of the system.

So every time I see someone complain about Wave, I can't help but think that they would have said the same thing about email when it first appeared.

We've been using Wave a bit at work.

It's nice that a ping (IM) can turn into a threaded chat can turn into a document. Editing, with change bars, is great.

It's also great that you can add someone to a wave "late" and they get to see the current state of the wave -- and the history if they care. Much better than forwarding someone an email that has done the rounds.

I agree with the person that suggested it is more useful "for work". Think of it more as "Lotus Notes"-lite than email.

I've been involved in a couple of "please participate in some interactive feedback on my app" wave discussions with some friends.

People had to email me to make me aware of the waves. I'm not normally signed in to google. So there's a participation/discovery speed bump for people like me.

However, there was no speed bump in getting that initial message to me via email.

Removing that hard to see speed bump, and other things like it, might benefit wave more than feature fixing.

Everyone got really excited during the demo at Google I/O, but the second I used it my reaction was "what do I do with this?". Email, IM and Twitter. That's all I need.

It seems like Buzz should have been based on Wave

Not a great long article like this but I put my thoughts about Buzz together on my blog and I think HNers might like to see it. http://chanux.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/my-buzz-rant

Wave is and always will be a research project. It was only launched because Google doesn't believe in pure research projects, and mistakenly classified it as a "product."

The original intention for Wave was as a protocol. The Wave client we all use at wave.google.com is just a reference client. Anybody know of other clients that do better?

FUD; a wave-to-email gateway is solved by design.