[marlag]

"was the real moment Google gave up on team communications" I believe so too and Wave might have failed because Google said "this is instead of email". Had they markeded Wave as a "team communications suite" like Microsoft is doing today with their team communication tools, and all the aother players too (we're getting used to hearing about communications suites especially at work, right?). But the world was probably not ready to hear about communication suites until maybe 2010, så Wave was also too early. And it definetly wasn't a email replacement.

Maybe this high-lights the drawbacks of being too focused on your core business, so focused that you cut of an arm (gchat) because it wasn't in line with your philosophy of having a totally open, standardized protocol that you (Google) hoped everyone eventually would be using. The players of today do not care about these things, they care about getting traction and a massive user-base and about encryption and privacy and claim their place in the spot-light because users love them.

Google knew we loved gchat. They must have know why. Google Drive + gmail + gchat, tailored towards businesses: good bye Office 356, see you never. Microsoft would be limping without Office... how could Google fail to make this happen?