Isn’t it weird how sometimes awesome things become iconic in the world, but sometimes equally awesome things don’t quite make it? The iPhone and Google Wave are two such products, and while I think the iPhone has become an international “thing”, Google Wave hasn’t, and probably won’t, despite being a great product.

Part of the problem is that Wave is too new. People are used to email, and I’ll grant that Wave does have some similarities to that medium, it is so completely different that people are deterred from using it. I think it gives the impression that this is a social tool like Facebook, rather than a productivity tool like email. To those of us who are tech savvy, we know that both are true, but appearances are everything in this case. However, this is only partly the story, if this were the only problem it would just take Wave longer to break through, while I think it never really will (loads of people will use it, but it won’t be a phenomenon like the iPhone).

My next reason is that we have reached such technological advances on the net, that it is simply not revolutionary enough to change how we think and work. It’s well written, it’s productive, it’s useful, but it doesn’t really do anything we haven’t seen somewhere else before, it just took a lot of ideas, adding 1-2 of its own, and executed it well. In some cases this is enough, but not in this one.

Also, Wave doesn’t follow the less is more philosophy, which is the trend these days. Think about Twitter for one. You can enter 250 characters and there are now more Twitterers than stars in the sky. I mean what’s up with that? The iPhone is the same story. No distracting interface elements, what you need, when you want it on screen, beautifully executed and never any annoying extra details you never need. Wave is the opposite of this in some ways. It follows the more is more philosophy, which in my opinion can be just as good, but here it confuses things a bit. Wave is not hard to use, it’s not something that has a 50 hour learning curve, but still, it feels complex because it stores and displays information in new and un-used to ways.

My last reasoning is that I believe revolutions will be made by offering different input methods. The revolution in progress right now, somewhat already passed us, is cheap, affordable touch screen navigation, the iPhone. It is so incomparably better than traditional input methods that it can truly be said to be a technological wonder. I think the upcoming phenomenons will be the ones that offer completely new mediums (like Twitter), or completely new modes of interfacing with these mediums (iPhone), all other applications and devices can achieve a firm status, but can not reach the coveted phenomenon and icon status.

That being said, I think Wave is a fantastic idea, but after signing  up eagerly, I sort of never used it, I just couldn’t make it productive for me. It does have great uses, especially for groups and teams, so please do give it a chance, but I don’t think it will ever earn the status of Gmail for example.