And Wave was the next big thing, until they suddenly put a bullet in it. Yes, it was "opened" and the code persists, to some extent. I think a lot of people h

And Wave was the next big thing, until they suddenly put a bullet in it. Yes, it was "opened" and the code persists, to some extent. I think a lot of people here on HN may nonetheless be pissed that, in the process, they absorbed and then destroyed the official, supported version of EtherPad. Maybe EtherPad as company / commercialized product wouldn't have made it... But, maybe it would have. Regardless, Google burned a lot of good will with that one, too. And, as numerous commenters have pointed out with respect to Keep: Google Notebook. P.S. In my opinion, what killed Wave was not the technology (or, "concept"), but in part a batshit heavy and obscure UI. One of the early signs of Google's trend towards a "design ueber alles" failing. Having spent many years in corporate environments, I saw Wave (as technology/"concept") as a real solution to a number of longstanding, pernicious problems I'd encountered with electronic communication, and its effect upon work, in those environments. I never used Reader much (signed up and subscribed to the same feeds I already followed, but a local reader was quicker and easier for me). But I gather from many comments that its key, distinguishing features were not the straightforward feed processing but the "social" aspect of the product. The "network" and "meta" that Reader enabled. For a company that (Google+, etc.) seems particularly interested at present in focusing on "network", this seems to be a particularly boneheaded move. I also agree with the philosophy of "don't piss off the alpha nerds... although I don't particularly like the descriptor "alpha". They have a canny knack of revealing the interesting (and "interesting" is what sells, online). And of being good hires, for creating same.