Announcing Google Shared Spaces
In August, Google announced that Wave would no longer be developed as a standalone product, but that the Wave technology would survive in other products. Today, I am happy announce the launch of Google Shared Spaces in Google Labs as one of those off-shoots.
Context & Ripple Effects
When Google Wave launched in May 2009, it was pitched as a wholesale reinvention of communication for the web — ambitious enough that early hands-ons treated it as a platform to watch rather than a mere product. By August 2010, Google had conceded the standalone version wasn't working and announced Wave would no longer be developed as a product, promising only that its technology would live on elsewhere.
Shared Spaces, debuting today in Google Labs, is the first concrete fulfillment of that promise: a lightweight spin-off built from Wave's collaboration technology rather than a revival of Wave itself. Routing it through Labs rather than making it a full product signals Google is testing how much of Wave's core is salvageable before committing further.
First-order effects
- Wave's remaining users and gadget developers get a sanctioned destination: collaborative spaces built on Wave technology inside Google Labs, replacing the doomed standalone client.
- Google Labs gains a visible testbed for salvaged Wave components, letting the team measure real usage without committing to another full product launch.
Second-order effects
- The move sets a template for how Google unwinds high-profile failures — extracting reusable technology into smaller experiments instead of discarding it entirely, which softens the reputational hit of shutting down a marquee project.
- Competing real-time collaboration tools now face a Google offering stripped of Wave's complexity, competing on simplicity within Labs rather than as a heavyweight platform.
Third-order effects
- If this salvage pattern holds, Google's biggest swings are likely to be followed by fragmentation into Labs-scale experiments, making Labs a de facto recovery mechanism for failed bets.
- The episode reinforces a structural lesson for the collaboration-software market: broad reinventions of communication struggle to displace existing habits, pushing vendors toward narrower, embeddable tools instead.
The trend: Google is learning to recycle ambitious collaboration platforms into smaller experimental products after their headline versions fail, with Labs serving as the landing zone.