My new project: Tact, a simple chat app.

Why you shouldn't trust Google Wave: it's broken

November 27, 2009

I couldn’t fit this in the post about Skype Chat vs Google Wave, so here’s my biggest gripe with Wave.

It has many UI flaws, but those are just minor glitches that I can live with. The biggest flaw is that some Waves can simply break. There’s one in particular where some member attempted to do something with a plugin. After that “something”, the wave is simply BROKEN for EVERYONE and the content is inaccessible. When we try to access the Wave, everyone gets this message:

This is data loss, and not acceptable. (Yes, I have submitted a response and reloaded many times.) So, my approach is that you cannot yet trust Google Wave and better be careful what you put there. I will change this when they either fix a wave or explain that this is an irrecoverable problem and how they make sure it won’t happen again. Until then, watch out with your waves.