It has been about six months since Google stopped developing their Google Wave platform, citing lack of “user adoption” as a major factor. This is odd considering the initial swell of excitement the service started with.

If you missed the’ hoo-haa,’ Wave was hailed as a new way to communicate, work and share; it is part email, part social networking service, part instant messenger, and part MS Office.

What Google hoped to achieve with the platform was to bring together all the things you would need to be as productive as possible. Things like Web-Browsing, Email, basic office applications such as Google Docs, along with the social tools to be able to share all of the above with friends and colleagues.

What made Wave exciting was the idea that you could, in theory, control all of the tools you needed from one place rather than logging in to different services. However, it never came close to delivering this.

So with a bit of distance and hindsight, what can we all take from this experiment?

1) If it ain’t broke, don’t try to reinvent it

One of the major hooks to early adopters was that Wave = email 2.0.

“What if somebody reinvented email and made it better?” Sounds an exciting premise, but ultimately email, while not being perfect, is more than adequate for the majority of peoples needs. The thought of learning a new way to email, having only just got to grips with the current version, would be a major turn off for many people.

You just can’t try to reinvent how people interact overnight with a new product. “This will replace email?” was the hype, but really, nobody wants email to be replaced.

2) Browsers are just as capable as stand alone apps

What Wave did achieve in the browser was rather impressive: Real-time word-by-word messaging and contextual spelling and grammar checking in 40 languages. There is still a level of excitement, watching collaborators respond, amend and contribute to projects in real-time, without a browser refresh or a ‘save document’ click. All of this is possible without a standalone application on your desktop. Which is a great leap forward in terms of user interactions for the web as a whole.

3) Product engining will not save your software

Just because you can, does not mean you should. Just because you can build a Google Wave, does not mean you should. Build something that is useful, not just impressive.

4) The ability to do anything is not always good thing

“You can do anything you want!” sounds great, but ultimately the lack of focus means your users end up doing nothing, which does not make for a useful tool. Most of the best tools I own do only a few things really well, rather than trying to do everything.

5) Experiments are good fun

It may have been flawed, but it was good fun while it lasted. There was the hype, then the potential, followed by the let down.  However, I am still really glad Google started Wave and that I was involved.  Experiments such as Wave are interesting and challenging and help to push things forward.The wider discussion, from the attempt to change how groups of people work and share, has been interesting and still rages today. It is through experiments such as Wave that ensure things will change in the long term. Come on Google…what crazy tool you got up your sleeve next?

On another note, I think I still have about 154 invites cluttering up my Inbox, if anybody wants to take them off my hands.