Remember the Segway? It was supposed to revolutionize human transportation. Remember the hype? It was everywhere. It was amazing. And now years later it’s nowhere. The day we all finally got to see a Segway I felt just about exactly the same way I felt when I finally got to see Google Wave: It’s nifty, but it’ll never take off.
If you’re not regularly reading Anil Dash then you’re missing some of the best writing on the web. He’s written an excellent article on Google Wave and why it’s a failure. (Of course he doesn’t actually come right out and call it a failure; he’s much too polite for that.) When we were introduced to Google Wave — because I am “in technology” — everyone and their mothers asked me what I thought about it. Nine out of ten times I simply replied with a “bah” … which was my very lazy way of saying what Anil did.
