Google Wave shelved – Blessing in disguise for Facebook?

Of all the products launched by Google, its Wave was the most ambitious. Google Wave wanted to accomplish everything which an interface could possible do. Google claimed it be an interface for “real-time” communication. It was lauded as the greatest innovation in Internet history. But what happened? Wave failed miserably. The interface itself was too heavy for the current day browsers and it was not fast enough to manage our day to day work. Moreover, the technology itself didn’t have a particular usage. It was simply a collaboration of all the major and minor products of Google.

Why Google came up with Wave?

Now, Google has announced that it is time for them to shelve the development of Wave. Google has stated that the lack of usage as one of the key reason for the shelving. But when you think about the actual purpose for Google to come up with Wave, you can only think about one thing – Facebook.

Google dominates everything in the Internet world – Messaging, E-mails, Videos, Pictures and everything else except for Social Networking. Facebook was something people relate to their life. They spend most of their online time at Facebook irrespective of the knowledge and usage Google gives them. It was mainly because Facebook offered them real time communication and collaboration. Google wanted to achieve the impossible by making people shift from Facebook. Well, that was not in store for future.

Differences between Facebook and Wave

To be honest, Wave wasn’t the same kind of social media as Facebook. Wave’s main application was that you could share documents with other people on the internet without facing any version-related problems. So we can be clear that Wave wasn’t up to all the instant messaging and other goofy stuff.

But the failure itself is a surprise to many. Over the years, Google has gained for itself a very large pool of users through its various applications – The search, Gmail, YouTube, Maps and Books. But when they launched Wave, it didn’t meet their required target. But Facebook on the other hand is not used to all these types of marketing strategies and neither does it have the different types of media to execute their new launches. Yet, Facebook remains the site with most active users till day.

How could Facebook benefit from Wave’s demise?

Now, how could Facebook benefit from the demise of Wave? It is rather simple to be fair. Now, Wave was good on some aspects. Its version-free document sharing and real time chat applications were a hit. But the cancellation was done on typical Google style. If their product doesn’t meet the required number, they will cancel it without taking any embarrassment in doing so. Why did they cancel it? It was because there weren’t many users who were using it. Now that is something Facebook has in excess. So, if Facebook can join hands with some trusted third party application developers and try out the kind of interface which Wave brought in, it could easily become a hit.

What the demise of Wave has brought to Facebook is confidence which states that they are the indomitable force in Social Media. Let us hope that Facebook makes use of that confidence and brings in more new facilities for its users.