Google Wave may have had more fans on campuses than it did anywhere else, but those academic enthusiasts weren’t enough to keep the free service afloat. Google announced yesterday that it will stop development of Wave, its experimental next-generation e-mail system that blended instant messaging, video chat, document sharing, and other tools in one platform.
Several college professors had been trying out Google Wave with their courses, and some saw it as a possible replacement for learning-management systems like Blackboard. At first the service was only open to those who snagged an invitation from an existing user, and last year at the annual conference of Educause, professors stood in line at a packed Google presentation to get their free invites. Google only officially opened the service to all comers in May.
Just today, a session on how to use Google Wave was scheduled at a conference on online learning.
“The Wave announcement is disappointing to those of us who use it daily in our classes and other collaborations,” said Raymond Schroeder, director of the Center for Online Learning, Research, and Service at the University of Illinois at Springfield, in an e-mail interview today. “It crossed institutional boundaries unlike the LMS,” he said, referring to learning-management systems. Mr. Schroeder had used Wave in a course, and he has presented it on its use at several conferences.
“The potential uses in higher education were many,” he added. “The potential uses in commerce and marketing were not clear. So, the business case was never effectively made.”
Google said in a statement on its company blog that it will add some of the features from Wave into other Google services.
8 Responses to Google Wave, Embraced by Many on Campuses, to Get Wiped Out
11159766 - August 5, 2010 at 10:55 pm
Academics need programs they can count on. Google develops great applications, but if they keep being dropped — as with Notes, and now with Wave — the trust needed to invest in using them will disappear.
cb_10 - August 6, 2010 at 9:26 am
This is the problem with being an early adopter. If the system doesn’t remain available (or has critical bugs) the users are left adrift. In this case, Google should have done a better job of letting users know that they might not be fully committed to this product. The damage Google has done is to their rep and to the size of the population likely to buy into the next big Google thing.My own philosophy, FWIW, is to wait out the initial buzz for things like this and see if there’s lasting power. Educational institutions can’t turn on a dime the way many businesses can. We commit by semester and year and need some firmer ground than this to build on.
graykane - August 6, 2010 at 9:34 am
I participated in a Wave critique of a graduate student’s prospectus. Wave’s real-time, line-specific collaborative capabilities coupled with its play-back feature encouraged me to work out its uses for peer review in a composition course. I’m sad to see it go!
mccoyshelley - August 6, 2010 at 9:41 am
I think the way it was rolled out, by invitation only, was part of the problem. I got someone to invite me, then I invited someone else. Okay, so there were three of us–now what? That was our feeling about it.
athlwulf - August 6, 2010 at 11:18 am
For my part, I felt that Wave was a preview look into communication in the future, but a bit before its time. I was at first deeply disappointed by the news, but then realized that most of what I like most about Wave was also available in Google Docs. Google has said that they will be using the Wave technologies in other projects, so I’m sure iterations of it will show up here and there.My real question, to add on to @cb_10′s concern, is why Google would kill the project that has been adopted by so many people. I know this makes me re-think my “Cloud Strategy” and will certainly change the way I advise faculty looking to adopt new technologies. I’m wondering why they chose to kill the project rather than let it sit, with no further development, and let those who have adopted it continue to use it. This shock to the system will certainly make some who are considering other google products like Gmail and Docs reconsider-but this does beg the question: Should we really be surprised when something in Beta and is free suddenly becomes unsupported?Lastly, for colleges that have adopted Wave as a platform, at least Google is leaving the source code as an open source project so both institutions and individuals can still run Wave on their own servers. Small consolation, I know.
evergreeners - August 6, 2010 at 5:20 pm
We seem to have high expectations for Google. I think it’s important to remember that Google was intentional of using the “labs” designation on this program. It was a free program that Google invited people to test while still in beta, I’m not certain why there’s such high expectation that Google continue to support it.I would always take pause in making a recommendation to a faculty for a long term adoption on a program still in beta.
icarus1213 - August 7, 2010 at 9:49 am
For those who might miss the functionality of Wave, take heart – I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if many of these features end up in Google’s own social networking platform, whenever that materializes.
stevefoerster - August 7, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Icarus1213 may be right abotu Wave tech getting put into Buzz, but it would be even better were it to be incorporated into a Google LMS: http://tinyurl.com/2bvz9dm