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google wave

Adios, Google Wave! Is Buzz Next?

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All things come to an end, even the good ones; or maybe, most especially the good ones. For the longest time now, Google seems to have had a golden touch. It has reached such great heights, but even such a big entity makes wrong judgment calls every now and then. With Google Wave, it seems like one of those things.

Yesterday, an announcement on The Official Google Blog finally put an end to speculation about Google Wave. Launched around a year ago in June 2009, Google Wave generated tons of interest and excitement – not so different with many other Google products. The interest did not prove to be enough, though, and even the most hardcore fan has to say goodbye.

Here’s a snippet of the announcement:

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. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

There’s good news at least – fans will have till the end of the year to use the site. Users will also have the tools to extract all the content they’ve put in there.

Now I am wondering…will Google Buzz suffer the same fate?

Google Turns Email Notifications for Wave

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I know for a fact that Google Buzz and Google Wave are two different services. But we can’t discount the fact that their functions are almost similar.  So let me ask you this question, since Google Buzz was released, are you still using Google Wave? If yes, then you’d be glad to know that Google has just activated email notification for Google Wave.

Google Wave’s notification works just like all the other Google notification systems – Buzz, Email Alerts for specific search results and others. It sends you email alerts whenever a wave that you are participating in gets an update or whenever a new Wave has been created by your Google Wave contacts. The notification contains a short summary of text and links that will lead you straight to the updated waves. Once you’ve checked out a wave, Google will stop sending the notifications related to that wave.

The feature also lets you select the frequency of email updates that will be sent to you. It could be as often as “immediately,” and you can select which of your friends you will like to receive notifications from, whenever they create a new wave or update an existing one.

Now, should you decide to use this feature, expect to encounter the following known issues so far, which Google is currently resolving. But don’t let this stop you from trying out the new Google Wave notification feature.

  • Sometimes the email snippet does not show all participants on the wave
  • Under certain conditions you may get an update about a wave even if you were the last person to change it
  • To change the notifications setting you have to go back to the menu where you turned it on. (The link at the bottom of the notification emails is not working yet.)

Microsoft Brings Bing to Web Search, as Google Creates a Wave

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It’s interesting how major Internet players will try to out buzz each other with their respective announcements.  When it was announced earlier this week that Microsoft is set to launch its new search engine Kumo, now officially called Bing, we didn’t hear anything about Google’s Wave Project. And so instead of taking the limelight, Microsoft’s announcement of Bing was over shadowed by the Google Wave.  Putting aside the competition issue, what exactly does Bing and Wave has to offer? [Read more…] about Microsoft Brings Bing to Web Search, as Google Creates a Wave