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Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

358 points ofalkaed | 6 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 1.212s | source | bottom

Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
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BirAdam ◴[12 Oct 25 02:43 UTC] No.45554716[source]▶
Google Wave.

Edit: you asked why. I first saw it at SELF where Chris DiBona showed it to me and a close friend. It was awesome. Real time translation, integration of various types of messaging, tons of cool capabilities, and it was fully open source. What made it out of Google was a stripped down version of what I was shown, the market rejected it, and it was a sad day. Now, I am left with JIRA, Slack, and email. It sucks.

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bdangubic ◴[12 Oct 25 03:10 UTC] No.45554837[source]▶
wave was fucking amazing. buggy but amazing
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burnt-resistor ◴[12 Oct 25 03:26 UTC] No.45554937[source]▶
Google sucked/s at executive function because they completely lack appreciation for proper R&D and long-term investment and also kill things people use and love.
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1. smrtinsert ◴[12 Oct 25 05:13 UTC] No.45555438[source]▶
Honestly a lot of the time they seem to be be in "what do humans want?" mode.
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2. burnt-resistor ◴[12 Oct 25 10:52 UTC] No.45557181[source]▶
Yep. And rather than ask people, focus group, or look at the evidence, they just guess or do whatever they want. Not much leadership or community engagement appears to be involved.
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3. DrewADesign ◴[12 Oct 25 12:53 UTC] No.45557901[source]▶
I don’t think that’s an entirely fair characterization. They obviously spend a great deal of time focusing on what their (human) shareholders want.
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4. burnt-resistor ◴[12 Oct 25 15:36 UTC] No.45558983{3}[source]▶
Well, that's fair. Overpaid managers and principle engineers spun "secret projects" and products like Glass well to be an elitist experience for special people. But I won't forgive not letting Wave bake and mature.

Q: Do they have non-human shareholders I don't know about, or do they have shareholders who lack qualities present in most living human beings?

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5. DrewADesign ◴[12 Oct 25 16:32 UTC] No.45559480{4}[source]▶
I’ve only met a few of their significant shareholders and based on that, I’d say the jury is still out.

I remember being excited by wave when the demo hit but never had a use for what it offered at that point in my career.

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6. burnt-resistor ◴[13 Oct 25 23:51 UTC] No.45574627{5}[source]▶
Hard to say what Wave could've become, but in Google fashion, they didn't really try and threw it away. Maybe it could've become a Discord-like meets Zoom platform but with more integrations.

Honestly, I'd like to see something like a hosted FOSS Hubot (bot) for Signal that can tap into zillions of IoT and cloud integrations.