Wave always made more short-term sense as plumbing to unify google docs/notebook/chat/mail/etc. Having, say, robots watching/operating on Google Docs and Email

Wave always made more short-term sense as plumbing to unify google docs/notebook/chat/mail/etc. Having, say, robots watching/operating on Google Docs and Email would be a huge feature advantage that competitors would have a very hard time catching up to. And you can offer that to users without trying to force them through the gauntlet that was the unified Wave interface. And, years down the line, when people are ready and the unified interface was polished, you could bring it back for people who want it.