
Save Google Wave - icodemyownshit
http://savegooglewave.com/
======
seldo
The ridiculously confusing interface to the Wave loaded on this page, plus the
fact that it takes 30 seconds to load and then runs like a dog, is the perfect
explanation of why Wave is being shut down. It's almost like that's what they
were trying to demonstrate.

~~~
moultano
What browser are you using? Loads in less than a second for me. The interface
doesn't seem any more complicated than a hackernews comment thread.

~~~
Cabal
I think you're being disingenuous, or just trying to get a rise out of people.
There's little debate on these points, it _was_ slow and the UI _was_
unnecessarily complex. Whether or not it should be killed remains a valid
topic of discussion.

~~~
moultano
I was talking about the same thing the parent was talking about. The page
linked in this submission. Why are you talking in the past tense?

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jerf
I know the protocol is a bit complicated, but didn't they say a while back
they're going to open source a reference implementation of the server? Is this
it?: <http://code.google.com/p/wave-protocol/>

I do not know if that's a complete Wave server, or if it's missing a piece.
But if it _is_ a complete Wave server, there's nothing to "save". It's already
been saved. You just need to run it yourself, and possibly support from Google
for exporting your data once. If it isn't, maybe some people will fill in the
blanks. If nobody steps forward to fill in the blanks then the demand probably
wasn't there in the first place.

~~~
derefr
What people want to "save" is Google's backing, proselytization, and continued
investment into the project. The demand was never there—because Google never
gave Wave a big marketing push, the way they did with, say, Chrome (no Wave TV
commercial?) Wave is a new and unadopted protocol, and as such it _won't_ grow
organically; it needs a big company to force it down people's throats. People
want to "save" the unfulfilled (implicit) promise that Google was going to be
that company.

~~~
jbooth
That's terrible reason. If it was a startup, they'd either sink or swim. Maybe
better marketing would have helped, maybe the client sucks, maybe the concept
sucks. But there's no reason for Google to throw good money after bad, it's
not like there's nothing else they could be working on (including the next,
better Wave from the etherpad guys).

~~~
derefr
> But there's no reason for Google to throw good money after bad

That's the thing—they haven't thrown _any_ money at the problem at all. The
whole problem is that it was a half-hearted effort from the start; Google
didn't put Wave anywhere visible, they didn't integrate it with Gmail or
Google Talk, or do anything else to get traction. They just sort of put it out
there and hoped people would subscribe. That's how _products_ work, but Wave
_isn't_ a product, it's a _technology_ —and you have to _sell_ a technology,
company by company, until it's in use in a sufficiently large user-base that
it becomes self-sustaining.

Imagine if the concept of "electronic mail" was invented today. You couldn't
pull that off as a startup; you'd have to be Google-sized to even get off the
ground.

Now, what Google _could_ have done, would be to go to Microsoft, Facebook,
Yahoo, and whoever else that has any product or service that's vaguely
message-/chat-oriented, and offer to help them rebuild that product/service on
top of Wave. Wave Facebook walls, Wave MSN, Wave Flickr, etc. Just making one
crappy AJAX client is exactly _not_ the winning strategy.

~~~
roc
> _"Imagine if the concept of "electronic mail" was invented today. "_

I don't think it'd be all that different from launching the concept of
microblogging or social networks. Startups did fine with that.

What Google _should_ have done, having a technology on their hands and not a
product, was make their other products either built on Wave or compatible with
Wave (Docs, Chat, Mail - using Wave. Calendar, Pages integrated via robots,
etc).

Then, you'd have a huge built-in user base that can ignore the complexity
until they grok it and if they want it. And all their data will be waiting for
them.

In the meantime, Google could develop and throw robots into their products as
features. Being able to directly send messages to a robot for publishing on
your blog platform of choice, or directly drag attachments to a robot that
populates Dropbox/Flickr/whatever? Being able to add a plugin to schedule a
party into an email chain that automatically updates Google Calendar? Having a
service that detects tracking numbers and provides mouse-over summaries?

Even for users who would never want a Wave-like client, those features would
make Google's existing products better and stickier. And none of it would
involve burying every would-be user in complexity on day 1.

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invisible
The most obvious feature Google should have invested 5,000 man hours in:
making Wave seamless in GMail as a standard. If you are talking to another
GMail user, Wave should be automatically turned on for that message. I do not
understand why this wasn't deathly obvious to them from the day that they
announced Wave at Google IO 2009.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
It could be that there were turf wars involved in this. It is not
inconceivable for the Gmail product manager to not want Wave integrated.
People switching to Wave could mean the end of his clout in company.

I don't know enough about internal Google to really say whether this is
probable or not, but I've worked for companies where that would have been the
case.

~~~
roc
I'd be willing to accept that if we were talking about Microsoft. I thought
Google was still better than that?

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njharman
No Please Don't. Google had the good sense and humility to let a failure fail.
Don't y'all go fucking that up.

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axod
[Wait several minutes for a large complex unwieldy UI to load]

~~~
redorb
at the time I went it had 300+ people in the wave and over 170 threads; above
what I suspect was the average user case; try loading a regular wave.. with
less than 20 people and its good to go. (use chrome if you can also; its
faster.)

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pvg
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be
sure.

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Groxx
Yes, _this_ will work. _Everybody_ listens to anonymous internet petitions.

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brapse
Many of the problems wave aimed to remedy still stand. It's my hope that
google will bow out gracefully, leaving behind the work they have done and
allow other to pick up where they left off. This seems to be the plan,
although they haven't open sourced the entirety of the effort.

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redorb
I do think the announcement to kill it off was a bit early :(

\- I use wave daily and have for a while for basic 'group meetings' with
people who work remote.

I am also surprised that Google didn't keep it alive for internal use (where
Gmail came from) ~ perhaps they have something entirely new in the pipe.

~~~
elblanco
I'd bet that lack of internal adoption is 50% of the equation here.

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durbin
Its open source, save it for yourself.

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pasbesoin
I definitely want to see Wave saved.

Further, I'll argue that since Google effectively took away our common,
central access to the EtherPad service (even though the source code remains),
they in some sense "owe" the community the effort of giving Wave more of a
shot -- although I expect a common response will be that "business doesn't owe
you anything that doesn't make money (in an legal fashion)".

My other comments (e.g. interface, lack of documentation and post-launch
publicity) are here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1578127>

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noarchy
I'd rather they just integrate Wave with Gmail, something that I wanted from
the start. I had no use for Wave, on its own, especially in the early days
when invites were slow to go out. For a long time, Wave sat there, unused. By
the time more of my friends and colleagues got access, no one cared anymore.
This is a shame, because Wave has tons of potential.

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MrRage
Warning: The petition just got overtaken by an army of trolls.

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charisma
I have never understood the power of petitions.. no matter how many people add
themselves to this petition will that make a difference? Will google change
its mind if a 300 odd (or even 3000 or even 30000) people add themselves to
this?

~~~
jgilliam
Google actually does. Here's one example <http://act.ly/3o>, where people in
Romania were petitioning to get street level data added to Google Maps. Google
responded fairly quickly and about a month later had data, which they then
asked all the people who tweeted the petition to beta test.

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gengstrand
There's nothing left to save. Google has already added collaboration
capability into their Documents and Buzz is what they went with for
microblogging in their mail app. [http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/future-of-
work/google-wave-rip-4...](http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/future-of-work/google-
wave-rip-40451) goes into 6 reasons why killing off Wave is the right thing to
do.

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smallegan
Has Google ever sold off a product or service? They certainly acquire but if I
am not mistaken it is also common practice for large corporations to rid
themselves or projects they are no longer interested in and sometimes this
involves a monetary transaction in their favor.

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hdeshev
Funny. I wouldn't want to be in Novell's shoes now after having invested in
building a product on top of Wave: <http://www.novell.com/products/pulse/>

~~~
jpablo
Pulse is not in top of Wave and really is a separated product that doesn't
depend on Wave at all. And in fact is what a lot of people are asking: Wave
behind your firewall.

(Disclaimer: I'm a Novell employee but I don't speak for them).

~~~
hdeshev
Thanks for the clarification. This blog post is also helpful:
<http://www.novell.com/prblogs/?p=2836>

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shortformblog
This site … it's like they turned Google Wave into a mix of
<http://YourWorldOfText.com> and 4chan. THAT use of the technology would be
awesome.

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zrbecker
I never found out what Google Wave was for, so it is really not a big loss.

~~~
Devilboy
Do people really think like this?

~~~
DrStalker
It wasn't obvious to me what it was for or how to use it, no-one I knew
personally was using it, and I don't have the free time to casually learn an
entire new paradigm to do... whatever it was you did with Wave.

~~~
Devilboy
How can you say 'no big loss' just because you personally didn't find it
useful?

~~~
DrStalker
Would you care more or less if Wave was made by a startup instead of a massive
existing company like Google?

New products fail all the time. When the company making the product fails to
even explain what the product does and just heaps buzzwords together I don't
feel any sense of loss when the product goes away. This wouldn't even be
newsworthy if it wasn't Google behind it.

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morphir
open source this thing so I can sudo apt-get wave, it would go good with
googles, "don't be evil"-slogan.

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j15e
.... not

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thingsilearned
nah

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mmj2f
#savewave

