I guess I should give them a pass considering that each of these were one day sort of things. However, it still really bothers me. The simple home page was one of the main factors behind Google's initial rise. It was one of the things I liked the most about it vs yahoo (aside from the great results of course). It bothers me that they are so willing to trounce upon some of the page's founding principles.
To me this is yet another indicator that Google is starting to lose it's way. In so many instances they just seem to lose focus. That doesn't mean that I don't think have any clue where they're headed. Their choices with chrome and android show that they have a good idea of where they want the next generation to go. At the same time the company has absolutely no sense of direction when it comes to individual projects and generating revenue.
Take Buzz for example. It had a few good ideas that I felt fixed issues I had with other micro blogging services. However, they put absolutely no thought into how the service would actually be used. When I post on twitter I intend it to be read by people I've never even communicated with before. I tag messages so that I can pick up new followers that are searching for those keywords. None of this ever occurred to Google leading to all the privacy issues we are so familiar with.
I think the same thing goes with wave. It's the perfect example of what happens when you just turn programmers/engineers lose, and let them run amok. They'll make all sorts of cool stuff without any foresight or cohesive business plan. The end result is a bunch of cool applications with no clear purpose. I feel that you should fulfill a specific need, and then if you do a good job you'll see the user take it in directions you never dreamed. Google never got that far. They just assumed that users would come up with what need it was fulfilling for them.