Google Wave makes me feel stupid
I feel a little like an ape in “2001: a Space Odyssey” staring up at the monolith when I look at Google Wave.
It’s shiny.
Undoubtedly clever.
Technologically advanced.
But what does it do? What is it’s purpose?
I kinda get it… it’s a bit like email, but collaborative.
A bit like a shared workspace/whiteboard.
It’s a persistant online collaboration area.
It’s got some IM features.
Does some of the stuff that Webex and Fuze Meeting do.
Maybe a bit of Huddle in there too.
But apparently this is a game-changer, and people are offering their organs and unborn children for invitations to the service.
I’ll say it out loud – I don’t ‘get’ it.
I can’t see myself using it productively.
I have loads of collaboration and communication tools, and I’m not sure where this one fits in.
When I send email of any importance, I give it a quick proof-read, check that my meaning is clear, delete the superfluous stuff, and then hit send.
I don’t really want people to see what I’m writing, letter by letter.
Even IM gives me the chance to construct my ideas 1 line at a time.
As an experiment in collaboration I have used Google docs to co-author an academic document for my studies.
We were a distributed team creating an 8000+ word marketing plan, and we thought we needed real-time collaborative tools to create the document.
It didn’t work.
For serious work, where complex ideas need to be constructed and detailed in a document, it just doesn’t work to have 7 people all working in the same doc at the same time.
I see I am not the only one who thinks that there may be a bit too much hype around Wave.
Much smarter guys than me don’t seem too impressed so far.
Gigaom weighs in, saying that “Google climbs to new heights of arrogance with Wave”, and Scoble writes that Wave will kill your productivity.
Have you used Wave productively, in your personal, professional, or academic life?
Can you see yourself using it beyond the “oh, cool!” stage?
First 8 comments get Wave invites.
Post comments using your Gmail account.
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Should have waited until I cleared my inbox – this fresh from Techcrunch – “Why Google Wave Sucks, And Why You Will Use It Anyway“
The Wave sounds as stupid as the conversation view email threading in Gmail.
Obviously, CONVERSATION VIEW SHOULD BE OPTIONAL! There are many cases where OBVIOUSLY conversation view is not the best solution. Just like Chrome, Google feels a need to limit our options to make things simpler and more user friendly. I actually do agree with making things as simple and user friendly as possible but look at this huge thread here. Google is forcing everyone into a more complicated and less user friendly world through their own arrogance and a mandatory conversation view!
Now, if Google is so unbelievably stubborn with something this freakin’ OBVIOUS and simple to change, imagine how much of a control freak they will be if they actually start making a real operating system. Or get any more power than they already have!! OBVIOUSLY GOOGLE IS INCOMPETENT!!! It’s too bad we all depend on Google so much for search. And just think, with all the searching we do, they probably have a pretty good database of all of us. Omniscient power to the Control Freaks!!!
Just imagine if real mail worked like conversation view. Who needs real mail coming in chronologically each day in a mailbox. I mean, if your mom sends you a physical piece of mail, it should just appear immediately next to any other letters your mom sent you over the years in some filing cabinet. Instead of checking your mailbox to see if she sent you something recently, you should be going through every file in your filing cabinet to see which people actually sent you something that day. Yeah, Google, you’ve really got this one figured out.
Isn’t it nice to get mail chronologically? Like a breath of fresh air really.
Mr. Big Boss Man arrives at the office. He’s quite meticulous and always likes to examine the mail the post man delivers each day.
Mr. Boss Man
(to his secretary)
Where is my mail? You usually place the new mail on my desk in the morning!
Secretary Gaggle
I’ve thought of a better way Mr. Boss Man.
I filed all of it away in our file cabinets.
Mr. Boss Man
What? Was there nothing important in it?
Secretary Gaggle
No, there seemed to be a lot of important stuff. But I thought I’d just file it away to save time later on.
Mr. Boss Man
Our filing cabinets are filled with year’s worth of archives. How am I supposed to find the stuff that just came in?
Secretary Gaggle
Oh, I put a little mark on every piece of mail. Just pull out all the folders and look for the bold mark. I’m sure you find most of it. The good news is that it’s already been filed so now you don’t even have to see it!! Look how clean your desk is!!!
Mr. Boss man gets up and opens a filing cabinet. He flips through some folders trying to find some of the recent mail.
Mr. Boss Man
How am I supposed to find any of my mail. Do you remember any of it?
Secretary Gaggle
Well, just ask me… I can help you search.
Mr. Boss Man
Ok. Did that customer Ms. Henkin send any mail? I was expecting something from her.
Secretary Gaggle
Oh, yeah. I think she did. But I didn’t put it under her file name because she was asking about our new product. So I filed it under the “new product” folder.
Mr. Boss Man
This is ridiculous!!! How am I supposed to find ANYTHING!
Secretary Gaggle
No really, my new system is much better…
Mr. Boss Man
What about Mr. Mucker? You know he’s sending an important business letter.
Secretary Gaggle
I don’t think he sent anything. Let me check his file. (She finds an envelope) Oh. Yeah, I guess he did. Here’s the whole file on him – I’m absolutely sure you’ll probably need to see everything he’s ever written to you… There… See? I can help you search for anything you ask me about. Sometimes I amaze myself how totally efficient I am. I’m so quick I filed all the mail before anyone even had to bother reading it!! Everything is great!!
Mr. Boss Man
Can you please just find everything that came in the mail today and give it to me? I ONLY WANT THE STUFF FROM TODAY!!!!
Secretary Gaggle
No! My mind doesn’t work like that. You need to jog my memory with keywords or something. Then maybe I can try to pull the related files. I hope I sorted it all correctly – I’m sure I did. Anyways, if we miss a few letters, I’m sure it’ll be alright.
Mr. Boss Man
You’re FIRED!
Mr. Boss Man was unable to find a couple very important letters which happened to come in the mail that day. One very timely letter sat in the filing cabinet until well after the court proceedings. Luckily, Mr. Boss Man only lost his business and his home. It’s too bad Secretary Gaggle was so incompetent but Mr. Boss Man will just have to deal with it. That’s life.
——-
The craziest part is that this is basically a true story – FOR EVERYONE WHO USES G-MAIL!!!
I still simply do not comprehend HOW Google can not see how OBVIOUS this problem really is. I mean this is a major issue that anyone from any perspective can easily see that GOOGLE IS IN THE WRONG HERE. Sorting mail by date is an ESSENTIAL FEATURE of a MAIL PROGRAM. I really don’t understand how anyone can even bother defending Google in this… I mean – yeah, they have “Search” – but so what?? Search is not SORT as the above dialogue expresses. Threaded conversations is a nice feature – for a very specific function only. IT SHOULD BE OPTIONAL!
I guess the really upsetting part is not so much that Google is clearly incompetent. Everyone make mistakes. It’s that when I search online about this topic, I find plenty of threads with LOTS of people all bitterly complaining that this is a problem. So Google KNOWS this is a major problem and refuses to fix it. The question is why? Why be EVIL? Power trip? They honestly think they are correct and only allowing threaded conversations will teach us all the errors of our ways? What’s the deal? It’s been years and this hasn’t been fixed… Why?
I never understood why people do evil things. The one satisfying bit to all of this is that eventually – at some point in the future, UNTHREADED SORT BY DATE will – I repeat – WILL be added into G-mail. Why do I say this? Because it is OBVIOUS. Anyone with half a brain can see that humans communicate FIRST in TIME and only then by SUBJECT. Think about that. It’s a fundamental aspect of the laws of physics of the universe. And Google is perverting those laws and trying to bend them to their will. But it can’t last forever and therefore I can safely predict this will change to reflect the way nature fundamentally works.
I can only hope someone at Google can read this and the feature will be added sooner than later. The longer they refuse to address such a fundamental flaw just shows how stubborn and arrogant they really are. And once this problem is finally fixed, the world will be ever so slightly better for a few hundred million people.
By the way, if anyone wants to make the above joke dialogue into a fun filled YouTube Video, it’s the kind of inside joke that might get some hits and push this thing forward a bit more.
And when I say Google is Evil – well – I realize they aren’t really as bad as the Monsanto’s of the world. But why do they refuse to listen to anyone or actually many many people as the case may be?? Actions by large powerful corporations are clearly very mysterious… or nefarious…