Oh look. Google Wave is dead. Google has officially pulled the plug on it. But why is it dead? I'll be happy to give you my humble opinion on the matter.

Way Too Long to Go Public
Really, Google? Why would you announce a product one year before you actually make it public? (Wait a minute, that sounds familiar.) There was so much hype about Google Wave when it was first announced. It was a trending topic on Twitter for over a month. People were begging for invites to try out this totally new take on email and online communication as a whole. After the hype died down, as we all knew it did, Google finally made Wave public after everyone completely forgot about it.

Consumers Just Didn't Get It
For the vast amount of consumers that aren't tech-savvy like the majority of people probably reading this article, I don't think they really grasped the concept of Wave. It did have a learning curve and I think a lot of people asked the question "Why do I need this over email?" Well, extensions were cool and live conversations were cool, but is it worth it to change my email address and get everyone I know onto Google Wave? Of course not.

People Couldn't Use It, So People Didn't Use It
After being in a private beta for a year, there were a ton of people that simply could not use it. Sure, Google gave us plenty of invites to hand out, but how many really joined and stayed on Wave? The vast majority of my contacts were not on Wave, so I too got bored of it very quickly and reverted back to Gmail.

Poor Marketing
Marketing is key to anything successful. Where was the marketing, Google? No one outside of their computer really knew what Google Wave was. It did get pretty big hype and I think Google just let the media take care of their advertising for them. The funny thing is though, I remember during the Super Bowl Google aired a commercial called "Partisan Love" about Google search and it still strikes me as odd that they would air a Google commercial when they basically own the search market. Plus, they couldn't possibly do any mass marketing on Google Wave because they kept it private for so long and anyone that didn't know someone currently handing out invites was screwed.

Thus, Google Wave has failed and I wasn't totally surprised. I don't think many were. Farewell, Wave. We hardly knew ye.