Five lessons from the failure of Google Wave

It’s not often Google admits one of its products is a complete failure, so the internet industry was shocked yesterday when the search giant said it will be shutting down the Google Wave platform by the end of the year.

Once marketed as a tool that would revolutionise the internet, Google Wave is a type of collaborative email network that incorporates aspects of social media.

Users interact with contacts to simultaneously work on documents, create and comment on event invitations, drag in files from their hard drives and host instant message conversations.

Google cites a low adoption rate as the main reason for shutting it down, which isn’t surprising given the idea was much too complicated for everyday use. It was criticised for lacking any type of purpose and being far too convoluted.

But let’s salvage something from this mess by outlining five lessons SMEs can take away from the failure of Google Wave.

Keep it simple

Google sells itself as a simple company. The classic home page is uncluttered and clear and its applications such as Gmail, Google Docs and maps have simple user interfaces.

The problem is that Google Wave breaks all these rules and steps away from the company’s culture. It might be nice to look at, but it’s extremely complicated for everyday use and many of the early testers simply didn’t know what to do with it.

Many Wave users become frustrated and confused after a few minutes of mindless clicking. How do I start a document? Who do I contact? Is this email, and does it work the same way?

The Wave homepage features countless buttons and features, including the ability to “playback” a Wave like a video. There are simply too many options, and while that’s fine, it’s not what Google is about.

Explain yourself

If you are going to make a complicated product, then you have to explain how to use it. The fact that Google Wave is too full of bells and whistles for the average user isn’t a bad thing, but Google never actually explained what it is Google Wave actually tries to accomplish.

As research firm Ovum points out, Wave’s “lack of definition… was its greatest weakness as you could do any of the things incorporated into Wave in other, more accessible, fashions”.

Collaborative editing and instant messaging are available elsewhere, so why should users switch to Google Wave? Google never really said what Wave was trying to accomplish.

Don’t oversell

This problem isn’t specific to Google – Apple, Microsoft and other tech companies like to promote many of their products as game changers. But it’s not so easy to get away with it when your product fails altogether.

Last year, when the Google Wave developer preview was announced, the company threw around some interesting worlds like “revolution” and “email replacement”. It used “unbelievable”, and yes, even “magical”.

Don’t oversell yourself. There is a delicate balance between hyping up a product and making yourself look foolish.

Figure out your market

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is targeting your product towards the wrong audience, and that’s exactly what happened with Google Wave. Google typically wants to reach the mass market, when in reality the Wave could have been a focused enterprise-based software product.

To Google’s credit, it does put up some case studies on the Google Wave homepage of how some workplaces are using it to communicate, and how some individuals are collaborating with friends and so on.

But that’s exactly the problem. Google Wave belongs in groups. It only works when you have colleagues or friends creating “conversations” or “waves” along with you. What the industry is seeing right now is that a few businesses have adopted the Wave platform well, but few individuals use it.

If Google had developed Wave into focused enterprise product, it would have sat extremely well alongside some of its existing apps and could have helped the search giant take on the Microsoft Office suite.

Use your mistakes

Let’s be honest here – not everything in Google Wave is bad. There are some particularly good elements, especially the ability to edit documents simultaneously with another user.

Google is probably going to incorporate some of these elements into its rumoured upcoming social networking product, which some analysts are saying will pose a threat to Facebook’s dominance.

This serves as a good lesson for SMEs. Just because you make a failed product doesn’t mean everything in it is bad. Analyse it, figure out why it went wrong, and then do what you can to improve on that – don’t waste a potentially ground-breaking idea just because it was put in the wrong package.