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I was so hype for Google Wave. There is one major reason it failed. They promised a feature that would enable waves to be embedded into normal web pages. This

I was so hype for Google Wave. There is one major reason it failed. They promised a feature that would enable waves to be embedded into normal web pages. This would allow me and others to collaborate on waves, but for the results of our work to be publicly viewable in a read-only fashion. Because they never delivered on that feature, I never actually used wave much. There was no reason to because as a private-only space it was just a weird chat room / document. Even if someone else doesn’t think that feature was important, I still think their biggest failure was simply not continuing development. They released it and hardly updated it at all. Even if it wasn’t getting traction out of the gate, they were on the right track. They just had to keep iterating and it would have ended up in the right place. They just gave up almost immediately.

alganet 1y ago
> their biggest failure was simply not continuing development Wave was a technology demonstration that eventually became Google Docs collaborative editing. In my books, that's a major success.
- resoluteteeth 1y ago
  Was that functionality really based on work from Google wave?
  - alganet 1y ago
    Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation https://web.archive.org/web/20090531063923/http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform https://web.archive.org/web/20090531063923/http://www.wavepr... https://drive.googleblog.com/2010/09/whats-different-about-new-google-docs_22.html https://drive.googleblog.com/2010/09/whats-different-about-n...
    - resoluteteeth 1y ago
      Isn't this just showing that they both used OT rather than that the docs functionality was based on wave? It seems like the version of docs that added this was likely in development at the same time as wave so unless you specifically know that the people who worked on wave then worked on docs I would assume that different people were responsible for it so the fact that they both used OT (which is pretty standard) doesn't seem to necessarily imply a connection.
      - alganet 1y ago
        The following section of the Wave whitepaper suggests that the chat app aspect was minor to the project. It was all about solving collaborative rich text editing: > Waves are hosted XML documents that allow seamless and low latency concurrent modifications. The following section suggests that the Wave team had a specific goal related to rich text OT extensions, which were NOT trivial at the time: > There are others that offer rich text, such as Google Docs, but do not offer a seamless live concurrent editing experience, as merge failures can occur. It also suggests that it was specifically intended to be featured later in Google Docs (it would not make sense to dunk on their own product). It actually doesn't matter if it is the same team or not. It is common to have a dedicated R&D separate from the deliver team for such breakthroughs.
        resoluteteeth 1y ago
        I'm not saying it necessarily wasn't used in docs but it seems like you also don't have any information indicating that it actually was and are just assuming that it must have been, so I would ideally want confirmation from someone who was actually involved with it at Google.
        alganet 1y ago
        I provided enough information, including the Google Wave team _explicitly_ citing the feature on Google Docs before it was launched. This is way more than an assumption. If you have any doubts about it, feel free to contact Google.
- MorpheusZam 1y ago
  I came here exactly to say the same, it’s a classical case of trying to solve a problem and end up with a completely different product. I think it was a great success, we used it at college for collaborating over documents, exactly the way we use Google docs now
bsimpson 1y ago
They built a product that needed a bandwagon effect, rationed how many people could join the bandwagon, and then complained that not enough people were on it.

alganet 1y ago

> their biggest failure was simply not continuing development Wave was a technology demonstration that eventually became Google Docs collaborative editing. In my books, that's a major success.

resoluteteeth 1y ago
Was that functionality really based on work from Google wave?
- alganet 1y ago
  Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation https://web.archive.org/web/20090531063923/http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform https://web.archive.org/web/20090531063923/http://www.wavepr... https://drive.googleblog.com/2010/09/whats-different-about-new-google-docs_22.html https://drive.googleblog.com/2010/09/whats-different-about-n...
  - resoluteteeth 1y ago
    Isn't this just showing that they both used OT rather than that the docs functionality was based on wave? It seems like the version of docs that added this was likely in development at the same time as wave so unless you specifically know that the people who worked on wave then worked on docs I would assume that different people were responsible for it so the fact that they both used OT (which is pretty standard) doesn't seem to necessarily imply a connection.
    - alganet 1y ago
      The following section of the Wave whitepaper suggests that the chat app aspect was minor to the project. It was all about solving collaborative rich text editing: > Waves are hosted XML documents that allow seamless and low latency concurrent modifications. The following section suggests that the Wave team had a specific goal related to rich text OT extensions, which were NOT trivial at the time: > There are others that offer rich text, such as Google Docs, but do not offer a seamless live concurrent editing experience, as merge failures can occur. It also suggests that it was specifically intended to be featured later in Google Docs (it would not make sense to dunk on their own product). It actually doesn't matter if it is the same team or not. It is common to have a dedicated R&D separate from the deliver team for such breakthroughs.
      - resoluteteeth 1y ago
        I'm not saying it necessarily wasn't used in docs but it seems like you also don't have any information indicating that it actually was and are just assuming that it must have been, so I would ideally want confirmation from someone who was actually involved with it at Google.
        alganet 1y ago
        I provided enough information, including the Google Wave team _explicitly_ citing the feature on Google Docs before it was launched. This is way more than an assumption. If you have any doubts about it, feel free to contact Google.
MorpheusZam 1y ago
I came here exactly to say the same, it’s a classical case of trying to solve a problem and end up with a completely different product. I think it was a great success, we used it at college for collaborating over documents, exactly the way we use Google docs now

bsimpson 1y ago

They built a product that needed a bandwagon effect, rationed how many people could join the bandwagon, and then complained that not enough people were on it.