Google Wave was really the spark that inspired me to "build a startup." With that said, it was a mess. It was a schizophrenic product that couldn't decide whether it was a developer platform or replacement for email. It had "everything" in the worst of ways.<p>It really was a Frankenstein; I distinctly remember threaded conversations that wouldn't collapse, weird and inconsistent results when contributing to the same "wave," and an interface that was honestly pretty awful (not to mention cramped on the screens of yesteryear). There's more: Google wanted to create a <i>protocol</i> but the tech was invite-only (???), it wanted to replace <i>email</i> but no one else adopted it. The whole thing made no sense.<p>But after watching the Google I/O talk, I was enthralled. I thought to myself "I bet I could build that!" And really, even if Google Wave failed horribly, it did contribute to the "real-time" web we all enjoy today.
Being based in Sydney, I occasionally meet people who worked on Wave.<p>They should be commended for ushering in a new vision for what the web could do. So much tech in there that is now considered standard.<p>As a product, it didn't fit a real purpose and was trying to do to much, but it should be remembered for opening our eyes to what was possible.<p>Tonight I'll raise a drink to all those who committed time to Wave and showed us the way (and I'm in Bondi, if anyone is around and wants to meet-up).
For the curious, I think this might be the first submission related to Wave on HN (May 28, 2009; 169 points, 99 comments):<p>"Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web."<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630427" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630427</a><p>Top comment starts out<p>> <i>"This is silly, it doesn't account for the many, many axes of communication."</i>
While the Apache Foundation hosts a lot of great projects, it also looks to me like a place where big projects go to die.<p>I'm thinking of the whole Apache Open-Office fiasco, among other things. Looking at their list of projects sorted by number of committers[0], event at the top I don't get the idea that most of those have a lot of momentum.<p>Do I just have a completely wrong impression? I'm curious if there's something to learn from this.<p>[0]: <a href="https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?number" rel="nofollow">https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?number</a>
People who aren't aware, this was the continuation of Google Wave, the real time collaboration tool that was, for a while, built into gmail, and then taken over by apache. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave</a>
I've said this before, but while I know for a lot of people Reader is the axed Google product they miss most, for me it will always be Wave. I know a lot of people didn't get it, and I can't blame them, but I was part of a six-person software team using Wave for a brief project and, despite its faults, it was the greatest communication tool any of us had ever used, and remains so to this day. Slack/Discord/Teams/Trello/whatever still don't come close.<p>(Which makes it all the more appropriately ironic that it had a bunch of Firefly references and easter eggs inside. It's like they knew.)<p>Anyway, I'm pouring one out for Wave tonight.
I learned about this from the recent popular article, “How not to replace email”:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16404452" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16404452</a>
I used Wave along with a group of friends when it first came out often. I also setup WIAB which was almost usable but never was as 'smooth' as the google hosted Wave.<p>what was smooth you ask? I never had issues, I even played people in some of the games they had to great enjoyment (was never able to get this on my WIAB)<p>I joined Apache Wave with great excitement when it first was accepted and yet disappointed in my inability to contribute. I am not a software engineer but I tried multiple times with different IDs and the response was (paraphrasing) go check this site and pick something to work on.<p>as the years went on multiple attempts were made to retire Apache Wave with last minute efforts by multiple people trying to keep it going. I knew this day would come and it is still sad to see.<p>I am not sure if there was a better 'onboarding' for noobs available if I would have done much but I think many open source projects may fair better if their barrier to entry for them were clearer
<p><pre><code> This is the way Wave ends,
Not with a bang but a whimper.
</code></pre>
I remember seeing how incredible Wave was at the time, such a shame to see it end like this.<p>But that's how the world goes sometimes.
<p><pre><code> git clone http://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator-wave-android.git
git clone http://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator-wave-docs.git
git clone http://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator-wave.git
</code></pre>
Does it even build?<p>Wave is one of those things that everyone raves about but has never used.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzuuWZPaXc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzuuWZPaXc</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ</a>
Wave was highly ambitious, but under resourced with a horribly botched rollout. It could have killed Twitter, Facebook, and preempted Slack, or better shifted them to a common open source framework which would have allowed a thousand twitters and fbs to bloom and interact. Real shame that OStatus couldn't get traction.
I remember doing a deep dive on Wave, specifically because I was interested in trying to figure out what I could build on top of the protocol.<p>Fundamentally, there was no way to persist the data. The open-source version was little more than a demo.<p>At that point I realized it was mostly hot air, said so at the wave meet up I was going to, and then stopped paying attention.
I've got different kind of annecdote that I need to share now that the thing got retired.<p>I missed the entire wave thing. Don't know how or why. But I just missed it. And I never ever miss these kind of things. My job at the time was consulting and advising startups and I just looked silly when "wave" came up in a meeting and I had no idea what it was.<p>I remember the CEO saying "You didn't see the video of the developers cheering with their laptops above their head?" ... which I did not.<p>It's one of those things that comes back to haunt me when I can't sleep. You know, one of those awkward social interactions that nobody but yourself remembers.<p>So good bye Wave. Bane of my existence.
Will never forget the launch event:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ</a>
Why don't apache update web interface.
It's just not fun anymore, I get all retrograde feel to it, but in 2018 it's plain annoyingly ugly and hard to understand what's going on on the page.
Google Wave didn't fall, it inspired me and many more for ambitious thinking. Its tech was adopted by other products. It changed something intangible and inherent to tech.
Didn't this start out as EtherPad? I remember that being an eye-catching demo of a way to collaborate on documents over the web. How/where did that go wrong?