Google quietly announced the end of Google Wave on its blog earlier this week. The reason given was that adoption rates were too low.
Just over a year ago we wrote about Google's big splash around Google Wave. One of the things we pointed out at the time was Wave's suitability for third-party developers to write applications to take advantage of this platform. In order for a large vendor to be successful at introducing a new development platform, such as Google Wave, a substantial partner ecosystem needs to be developed and nurtured to adopt the new platform. Good technology alone is never sufficient to ensure success in the marketplace.
As our friend Dana Blankenhorn has alluded, simply going it alone, tossing great technology out there, and hoping that the market will converge around any given technology is no replacement for a solid business model. At least Google had the good sense to recognize the problem and do something about it. That takes guts.
Google Wave was cool. But in business there's more to surfing than simply finding a cool wave.
...David Sengupta. In addition to his role as Ferris analyst, David is chief architect for Quest Software, and has been a Microsoft Exchange MVP since 1998.
One Comment
David,
Amusingly, at a recent Enterprise 2.0 conference Novell was showing off their new “Pulse” product based on Google Wave protocols and APIs. They say that Pulse will keep beating (I couldn’t resist) despite Google’s dropping of it own Wave.
-ben-
Ben – interesting observation. I can’t help thinking of how heart cells will beat even when removed from the heart. Much harder to find a value proposition for heart cells in vitro sans heart, though. Novell will be pushing string uphill … -David