Not that anyone in the press was actually rooting for the much hyped Google Wave to fail, but that doesn't mean the media wasn't more than happy to flex its headline writing muscle when Google did announce yesterday it wouldn't develop Wave as a standalone product.
We went with the rather obvious "Google Wave washes out," while others wrote "Google Waves Goodbye to Wave" and that the "Tide is out for Google Wave."
Scobleizer had "Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype." "Google Wave Drowns" wrote another blogger.
Maybe it's negative thinking, but it's one of the first things I think about when I hear a new company name or product name. About whether it might wind up in the old IT Industry Graveyard.
Sure, Google got lots of "Wave makes a Splash" coverage at the start (though also at least one "jumping the shark" reference), and one pundit even posed questions about whether it might be a Twitter or Facebook killer.
But I remember thinking back then that crashing, washing out and drowning might not be far behind.
I know that marketing people get paid big bucks to come up with company and product names, such as those that include colors in them, though the oodles of projects that Google cranks out through its alpha and beta machines might not get quite so much early marketing intervention.
Anyway, not that I'm wishing RIM anything but the best with its BlackBerry Torch, but...
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