What an eventful arrival and such a low-key exit, Google wave was a product with immense potential that didn’t materialize. It promised big but never delivered, neither for Google nor for those who were rooting for it, since the day one. Huge expectations are easily converted into disappointments and in Google’s Wave case,  it was the hype that inflicted the most damage. People literally paid for the invites and it was only normal that they found it a little too dreary. The users failed to make any sense of it and it seems, Google has also failed to make any sense, and so they are abandoning Google Wave as a product.

This is what they’ve to say at their blog

“But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began.”

So … another Google product bites the dust. People are rightly pointing out that so far Google search engine has been the only success story coming out of Google labs. Otherwise most of their popular products are actually acquisitions. Then again, when you have something as big as Google, you can probably afford these setbacks.

A lesson for all online businesses and Internet Marketers:

In spite of its short existence, Google Wave has highlighted many points worth remembering for online businesses and internet marketers. For example, it proved yet again that instead of focusing on the product features and novelty, you’ve got to concentrate on the purpose that the product can serve for its users. You cannot just create an unusual, ultramodern product and leave it for users to try and find some ways of using it. It also places the emphasis on the point that sometimes creating disproportionate hype can be a bad thing. In their own words “they weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication” and it wasn’t only Google who got it wrong. Seemingly all of the beta testers, those who cheered for it at Google I/O and those who eagerly discussed it on their Blogs, were mistaken in their assessments. In fact those, who admired the product back then, were as confused as the rest of us. However the hype made it difficult for them to express their perplexity, hence, they came up with positive reviews just to be able to ride the bandwagon.