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It's an interesting post and raises several cogent points but it misses the biggest problem with Wave: it was a solution in search of a problem. I say this sim

by cletus 15y ago

It's an interesting post and raises several cogent points but it misses the biggest problem with Wave: it was a solution in search of a problem. I say this simply as someone who was, at the time, outside looking in. I know little more than that but it had all the hallmarks of what happens when engineers are running the asylum. Here's this communication medium in which basically all other communication media can be implemented (Email, IM, forum posts, Twitter, etc). It's the kind of general solution that engineers come up with it. I read a post from someone else (can't find it now but I think it was on Quora) who was familiar with the matter and they were saying the risk-reward thing (which this poster mentions in passing) was all messed up. Basically the incentive structure rewarded mediocrity. I can't speak with any knowledge of those matters but I can believe it. After all, in a startup what happens if the startup fails? You find a new job. There is a strong incentive to make your runway last and get to your next funding round (or, Heaven forbid, profitability). Inside somewhere as cashed up as Google, those incentives (IMHO) disappear. If the "startup" fails, what happens? You just move to another part of Google. What do you think the odds were that with Wave going away, any extra Wave incentives became worthless (as would happen in a startup)? Basically zero (IMHO).

bigiain 15y ago
http://www.quora.com/Google-Wave/Why-did-Google-feel-that-Google-Wave-was-a-good-product http://www.quora.com/Google-Wave/Why-did-Google-feel-that-Go... "Part of the deal initially was that Wave would be compensated much like a startup, base salaries were supposed to be low but with heavy performance linked bonuses which would have made the Wave team rich upon Wave's success. During the course of negotiations and building the Wave product, the "heavily reward for success" part of the equation remained but the "punish upon failure" got gradually watered down into irrelevance, making the entire project a win-win bigger proposition."
moonlighter 15y ago
I totally agree. Running a 'startup' in a company like Google compared to a REAL startup is like having your own room in your parents home versus sleeping in a tent under the Brooklyn bridge. One has serious ramifications, the other is a walk in the park: Putting your life on the line or not.
viscanti 15y ago
I disagree. Wave's biggest problem was that it wasn't user friendly. If you wanted to search for open topics, you needed to use under documented search modifiers. It worked just fine for most early adopters, but never gained traction because it just wasn't accessible to a wider market. The problem wasn't that it didn't serve a purpose. The real-time collaboration has moved to google documents, and fills a real need. That said, your analysis for the failure is pretty accurate. It was a focus on engineering over user experience that sealed Wave's fate as a case study on how to not build a product.
josephg 15y ago
Every time I tell an engineer that I worked on the wave team, I'm greeted with the same response: "Oh, Wave! You know, the real problem with wave was X". And then I stop listening, and tell them this: I have heard that for all the values of X. Here are the most common: - It was too hard to use / I didn't know what to do with it - It didn't integrate with email / didn't have email notifications - It didn't support IE - I started using it, but none of my friends were using it, so I stopped - It was too slow Too late, the team spent a bunch of time talking to actual users and finding out how they were using the product and what their real pain points were. People use wave to communicate in small teams. IIRC the biggest pain point our users cited was that wave didn't support printing. The people who did get over the adoption hurdle ended up using wave a lot. (I still wonder if maybe wave might have survived if we had charged for it.) Wave died because we were too slow to make it good. The code base consists of around 1M lines of java. With 1M lines of code, you need a giant team to get anything done, and a giant team working hard on features tends to add even more code. The wave team burned too much money too fast. And we were still working too slowly to get explosive user growth. It made lots of people sad, but Google was right to kill wave. If I could go back in time and give advice to the team, I would say: - Don't use Java - Don't scale past a few engineers. You will have a much longer runway that way, and you'll need it if you want to replace email. - The network effect will kill you unless you integrate with email from day 1. - You don't know what you're building, so talk to users early. Like, today. - Don't optimise for scalability until you know what the product is supposed to be - Don't try and reinvent the scrollbar, you idiots. (So much stabbing.)
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  -Don't use Java Could you recommend a good alternative? Also, could you elaborate a bit as to why not?
  - josephg 15y ago
    Every line of code adds spec inertia. Java makes you write a lot of code, which makes it super hard to redesign your project when you pivot on features. Java works fine in enterprise software written against a strong spec. But wave never had a strong spec - It was an experiment. Inevitably, we spent a lot of time making the wrong thing. We needed to be able to change wildly based on user feedback. We needed a light, nimbler language which would let us pivot easily and throw away code. ... And you optimise for a changing spec with a small team and a terse codebase. Today I would recommend Coffeescript, Rails or Scala. Maybe even Go. A few years ago, Ruby, python or C++. Erlang, clojure or haskell would probably work too, depending on the team.
tseabrooks 15y ago
I call BS on all of the anti-wave comments that come out. "Problem without a solution" is complete nonsense. It was the solution to a very real problem I have, and I only have 5 friends. We still use wave daily, exclusively really, and find it to be FAR AND AWAY the best platform for group communications. It has a few bugs still, and that's to bad... but it's full of greatness.

by cletus 15y ago

bigiain 15y ago

http://www.quora.com/Google-Wave/Why-did-Google-feel-that-Google-Wave-was-a-good-product http://www.quora.com/Google-Wave/Why-did-Google-feel-that-Go... "Part of the deal initially was that Wave would be compensated much like a startup, base salaries were supposed to be low but with heavy performance linked bonuses which would have made the Wave team rich upon Wave's success. During the course of negotiations and building the Wave product, the "heavily reward for success" part of the equation remained but the "punish upon failure" got gradually watered down into irrelevance, making the entire project a win-win bigger proposition."

moonlighter 15y ago

I totally agree. Running a 'startup' in a company like Google compared to a REAL startup is like having your own room in your parents home versus sleeping in a tent under the Brooklyn bridge. One has serious ramifications, the other is a walk in the park: Putting your life on the line or not.

viscanti 15y ago

I disagree. Wave's biggest problem was that it wasn't user friendly. If you wanted to search for open topics, you needed to use under documented search modifiers. It worked just fine for most early adopters, but never gained traction because it just wasn't accessible to a wider market. The problem wasn't that it didn't serve a purpose. The real-time collaboration has moved to google documents, and fills a real need. That said, your analysis for the failure is pretty accurate. It was a focus on engineering over user experience that sealed Wave's fate as a case study on how to not build a product.

josephg 15y ago

Every time I tell an engineer that I worked on the wave team, I'm greeted with the same response: "Oh, Wave! You know, the real problem with wave was X". And then I stop listening, and tell them this: I have heard that for all the values of X. Here are the most common: - It was too hard to use / I didn't know what to do with it - It didn't integrate with email / didn't have email notifications - It didn't support IE - I started using it, but none of my friends were using it, so I stopped - It was too slow Too late, the team spent a bunch of time talking to actual users and finding out how they were using the product and what their real pain points were. People use wave to communicate in small teams. IIRC the biggest pain point our users cited was that wave didn't support printing. The people who did get over the adoption hurdle ended up using wave a lot. (I still wonder if maybe wave might have survived if we had charged for it.) Wave died because we were too slow to make it good. The code base consists of around 1M lines of java. With 1M lines of code, you need a giant team to get anything done, and a giant team working hard on features tends to add even more code. The wave team burned too much money too fast. And we were still working too slowly to get explosive user growth. It made lots of people sad, but Google was right to kill wave. If I could go back in time and give advice to the team, I would say: - Don't use Java - Don't scale past a few engineers. You will have a much longer runway that way, and you'll need it if you want to replace email. - The network effect will kill you unless you integrate with email from day 1. - You don't know what you're building, so talk to users early. Like, today. - Don't optimise for scalability until you know what the product is supposed to be - Don't try and reinvent the scrollbar, you idiots. (So much stabbing.)

felipemnoa 15y ago
-Don't use Java Could you recommend a good alternative? Also, could you elaborate a bit as to why not?
- josephg 15y ago
  Every line of code adds spec inertia. Java makes you write a lot of code, which makes it super hard to redesign your project when you pivot on features. Java works fine in enterprise software written against a strong spec. But wave never had a strong spec - It was an experiment. Inevitably, we spent a lot of time making the wrong thing. We needed to be able to change wildly based on user feedback. We needed a light, nimbler language which would let us pivot easily and throw away code. ... And you optimise for a changing spec with a small team and a terse codebase. Today I would recommend Coffeescript, Rails or Scala. Maybe even Go. A few years ago, Ruby, python or C++. Erlang, clojure or haskell would probably work too, depending on the team.

tseabrooks 15y ago

I call BS on all of the anti-wave comments that come out. "Problem without a solution" is complete nonsense. It was the solution to a very real problem I have, and I only have 5 friends. We still use wave daily, exclusively really, and find it to be FAR AND AWAY the best platform for group communications. It has a few bugs still, and that's to bad... but it's full of greatness.