It's amazing that with nearly unlimited budgets, the brightest brains in the industry and foresight only found in science fiction movies, Google could fail at a product. But this is exactly what happened today when the company let their Wave project (http://wave.google.com/about.html) fizzle out.


"Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don't plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product," Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Hölzle said.And the moment developers stop supporting a project, the project is dead that very moment. Sure it will carry on for awhile but it will eventually fizzle out.I guess the tide never turned in their Wave.Google violated some rules of marketing. Here are a few reasons Google Wave didn't carry web surfers for a wild ride:

Rule of Marketing: Be number one or number two in a market. If not... get out.

Google wasn't number one or two. Both Twitter and Facebook already had those spots. Where could go they go? Coke, Pepsi and ....??? Exactly.

Rule of Marketing: Be the first to release a product in a market.

They weren't first. They were a distant third. Twitter already had a hold on developers and early adopters. Facebook already had the home and consumer market.

Rule of Marketing: Be understandably different.

Wave wasn't.

Rule of Marketing: Slowly release new ideas.

The masses move slowly. The public can't handle ideas too radical as they can't make the jump. Trying to get them to jump from step one to step five is impossible. You have to lead people down a path by taking them from step one to step two to step three and so on.

Rule of Marketing: Rebrand in different arenas.

This is very difficult for companies to grasp. Every time I suggest this in board meetings, I get the same response that the team wants to use the existing product to launch a related product.

Google is a search engine product. Trying to slap the word Google on everything isn't going to work in the long run. It didn't work for Coke, it didn't work for Sun slapping Java on everything and it won't work for Google.

Toyota did it right. When Toyota launched a luxury line they didn't call it TLL, Toyota Luxury Line, they called it Lexus. And it worked. People associate one to one, not one to many. There are more but that's all I have. Wife's calling...