The Daily Maverick’s First Thing informs me that google is killing off Wave, the collaboration service that merges mail and chat and document share. There is a small group of loyal users, the company said, but it’s too small. So the service will be maintained until the end of the year, then shut down. Check out the 411 on the Google Blog.
The question is why.
I would say that two things informed it’s commercial failure:
- They arrived late with the service bundling idea
- Nothing they presented us with beat the existing offering by other service providers convincingly.
The lesson to be learnt is that market leaders arrive early, and that not even a fad wad of cash can buy you a competitive advantage. And the way Google pitches themselves could do with a repeat – just check out the gmail.com front page for the mother of uncompelling sales pitches – the mother of all free web based mails… we think.
Filed under: news, wave goodbye Tagged: | canned, google wave
