Why Google Wave failed?

About a year ago, I already saw (somewhat) the demise of Google Wave. It was much more evident when they rolled out Google Buzz (splitting user attention).

So yesterday, Google announced they will stop development of Google Wave:
<blockquote>But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has
not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to
continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain
the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology
for use in other Google projects. {via}</blockquote>
This is just over a year of developing a real-time communications
tool that many touted as the replacement to email. Or so they thought.
So what was the problem with Google Wave? Well, it was too damn fast
busy and in “real-time” that it requires a lot of your attention. It’s
like moderating a dozen Yahoo! chatrooms all at the same time. It was
also slow (so unlike GMail that’s lean and mean).



Google Wave was also an ambitious endeavor — it wanted to replace
your Email Inbox. But email, despite its shortcomings, is still very
pervasive and hard to shake off for many. Then they had Google Buzz, a
trimmed-down version of Google Wave. Buzz may have significantly driven
attention away from Wave.


Still, Google is proud of Wave and what they’ve done with it:
<blockquote>“We celebrate our failures. This is a company where it is
absolutely OK to try something that is very hard, have it not be
successful, take the learning and apply it to something new. – Google CEO Eric Schmidt“</blockquote>
Is anyone here going to miss Google Wave?