Goggle has waved its last wave in the decision to cease development of Google Wave as a standalone product. This should not come as a shock as despite the real time communication through character-by-character live typing and the drag-and-drop (both are available as open source) as well as the real time sharing of images a images and other media it was just not embraced.
The Challenges of Google Wave
Google Wave may have been cheered at the 2009 Google Wave I/O Developer Preview, even in its early stages of invite only it never really caused the frenzy Google would have hoped. It was innovative and useful but at the same time it is a bit confusing. The invite only did not bring drones of people to the virtual doors of Google pushing themselves to be the next one invited.
In May when Google dropped the invite only the attention was minimal and people were trying to find where it fit into what they were already doing. It never created that buzz of how easy it is to use and how much time was saved and interactions increased by using Google Wave. Absent buzz, Wave fizzled.
The End is Near for Google Wave
Google Wave will remain live until at least the end of the year and the technology will be extended for use in other Google projects according to Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow. This is good news for those that do interact and share a wave regularly. It never really caught on for me as connecting on yet another platform with people that I was already connected elsewhere seemed to take up more time in checking messages and conversing there as well.
Did you embrace and use Google Wave? Sad to see it go?