Save the Wave!

Save the Wave

Dear Dr. Schmidt

When Google announced launching of Google Wave, it was a reaffirmation of our belief that Google is a company dedicated to making world a better place with technological innovation. Many amongst us greeted the technology as revolutionary and a potential game changer.

Therefore we are dismayed to hear your announcement of closing down the Wave service and its further development.

We believe that Google should continue to lead by developing innovative products and technologies, even as it competes with other companies in other areas where technologies are well established.

We request you to view Wave, not just as another social networking tool but as a robust platform for conducting serious business, which will be welcomed by corporations and academic organizations. However, at present, this technology should be considered at an incubation stage, which needs nurturing before it achieves its true potential. A company of Google's stature has the ability to provide such nurturing. In course of time, Wave shall become an attractive social channel and find the traction with the user community that Google hoped for. Think of it as a winner two years from now.

We therefore request you to continue to support its development with the existing team of engineers. One reason for its failure to get a large user base, as identified by many analysts, is that the users were confused about how it could be of use to them. This was due to promoting Wave as an omnibus communication and collaboration tool. Perhaps development of a few simple applications that target definite uses or user communities could demonstrate its power and capabilities until such time when they are ready to start exploiting it fully. However, if Google still feels compelled to curtail its investment in Wave, we request that it is not fully abolished but continued with a lower level of support. Finally, if you still remain convinced that this service has no future, we earnestly hope that you will take steps to make all source code for the service, development tools and other applications based on Wave technology be provided to the user community under an appropriate open source license. This will help Google earn goodwill from the developer community, many members of which have toiled for countless hours, developing robots and gadgets and planning full applications on the Wave platform.

We sincerely hope that you reconsider your decision to end development of a truly wonderful technology.

We plead with you to Save the Wave.

[Your name]