Now Google Wave is being canned - what next?

This week saw the the news was that Google is halting development of their “email replacement” tool Google Wave. It's a pity, but... how was it for you? Did you try it?

I did. Watching the video of the Wave demo at the Google developers’ conference. I was impressed and signed up.

Whether it was ever going to replace email or not – it seemed to have great promise as a collaboration tool.

How big would it ever get if it was just sold as a collaboration tool? The network effect meant they needed a bigger user base. That’s why I think they pushed it as the replacement for email. Super-email just might have achieve a big enough network, whereas social-collaboration would fail.

So – apart from the lack of people to use it with what else went wrong? Well...

1) It needed to feel a bit more familiar to users. The few people who joined me in trying it needed a closer cousin of software and services they already used and liked.

2) Using it in Internet Explorer required a Chrome Frame plug-in and the non-IE version of Flash Player. In tightly locked-down companies the potential user had to get IT-support to install it before they could try Google Wave.

So what can do the collaboration job if Google Wave can’t?

I’m not putting any money on it – but I do think the future of collaboration will have social media aspects.

I hear good things about @Task - it looks really interesting. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they could achieve something the mighty Google couldn’t?