It’s been an interesting year for Google.  Back in May they stopped selling the Nexus One phone directly, effectively ending their attempt to takeover the mobile phone business.  Now after much hype on how Wave would change the world as we knew it, Google shuttered the service.  Even with several people all about it like Chris Brogan (ChrisBrogan.com) and Gina Trapani (Lifehacker.com) it couldn’t get enough lift to fly.  What happened?

As a Wave user and creator, I was bothered by a few issues.

First, it was limited to the invited only, and that eliminated possible connections.  Because of the limited connections, a low number of people were using it, which led to limited connections, which led to…  you get the point.  Early users were invited, then allowed to invite others.  This worked great for Gmail, but not so great for Wave.  Back when Gmail came around there were already web-based email accounts available, most notably from Yahoo and Microsoft/Hotmail. So there was competition. Gmail started small, but began to grow as people talked about the new ways of organizing emails.

But Wave promised to connect us all with email, chat and more.  But we already had email. And we already had chat. And the connections were already being given to us by Facebook and Twitter, especially Twitter. There, I can follow anyone at anytime with no invitations necessary.

But I tried!  I really tried! I created a Tennessee Wave Users Group that evolved into a place for people to say, “I’m using Wave from Nashville!” or whatever area of the state they were in.  Not exactly the kind of collaboration that changes games.

Next, it was hard to see potential uses for it.  Once you were in it, there was no clear path to do anything.  I found it confusing to figure how to read waves, update waves, follow waves.  Evidence of the complexity was Gina from Lifehacker.com who took it upon her shoulders to build the manual.  A manual that ended up being 195 pages (too?) long.

If you did sit straight up in bed with a revelation on how you could change the world with it, you had to invite someone to join, try to explain what Wave did, wait for them to join, then work with them through their learning curve. Clunky. By that time, you could have implemented your world changes with email and Facebook chat/messages.  You could even let the world in on it with a Twitter update.

And for me it was slow.  I heard there was some massive javascript running behind the scenes.  I have no problem with pushing the envelope, but it seemed the browser and computer struggled to get that all going in the same direction.  And yes, I tried multiple browsers.  I mostly used Chrome, Google’s own and supposedly the best for all this javascript juice.

OK, so I wasn’t the biggest fan.  I still believe this is not a total failure.  Google learned a lot from this effort, and I’m sure we’ll see pieces of it again.  Maybe in Gmail, maybe in search, maybe in documents, but we’ll see parts of it again. In fact, ZDnet has already weighed in on how it could rise from the ashes.

So what did you think?  Did you try it?  Do you agree with me, or were you getting misty-eyed when you heard the Wave had passed?