So it has recently come to my attention that Google are ending development for their inspired Google Wave. While it doesn’t surprise me in the least it does make me sad, as even though it did have functionality problems, usability problems and the titanic foe of email, it also had some epic brilliance.

For those of you who don’t know what Google Wave is, I wrote a fairly short wiki entry on it for a university project which should get you up to speed.

So what was the problem with Wave? Having pushed the technology time and time again at University as a medium to use while writing projects in a group, I see myself as somewhat of a Wave Crusader…but it was very rarely used in a significant way. I attributed this down to people wanting to stick to what they know, and that is Microsoft Office, but it was very successful as a way of combining notes on the layout of a project and for assigning tasks once the layout was finished.

In fact, looking down my list of waves, the majority of them are lists and I have never used the extra functionality they have on there such as photos, maps, polls and games. While the idea behind all of these are good, without some functionality that everyone one would use in a collaborative setting there is just no point in having these ‘gimmicky’ functions. By functionality that everyone would use I mean spreadsheets, presentation software along with the word processing, and then being able to have them all in one wave.

But wouldn’t Wave then start competing with Google Docs? I think that is exactly the problem. Wave tried to pass itself off as email reinvented but came to sit between a messaging app and a word processing environment, neither of which people really need, and that confused everyone. At university I had to do a presentation on Google Wave to show everyone what it actually was, and it wasn’t an easy task. I came from the angle of ‘email replacement’, but having used it I don’t feel that it is. The best way I can describe it now is instant messaging but with added functionality such as inserting images and it keeps all the conversation in a well organised and readable manner.

The best we can now hope for is that some of what Google has learned with Wave will come through in Docs, because it is in dire need of an update. Welcome additions would be some sort of easy to use commenting system, easy embedding and better controls for document manipulation, not to mention more compatibility between spreadsheets, presentations and word processing.

Wave was a brilliant idea, and if it was a bit more polished with a few more useful bits of functionality it could have stood a real chance of becoming successful, so it makes me a bit sad to say goodbye, but I really hope something useful can be brought to Google’s future products.