The much-hyped, rarely understood Google Wave project--essentially an email application with more intensive real-time collaboration and communication tools bolted on--will be developed no longer, Google announced in a blog post this afternoon. Can't say that it's much of a surprise.Wave was composed of several technically innovative individual parts, like its real-time, as-you-type chat, an advanced spellcheck algorithm and the ability for developers to build their own add-ons. Innovative enough but the service lacked cohesion. Put simply: no one knew what to use it for.
Google says "Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked." It will be maintained through the end of the year, and for those rarefied few that understood the service enough to start using it, they'll have a way to export all their data before the plug is pulled for good.
Recommended reading:
* The Tide of Google Wave
If you like this informative post, then please subscribe to my full RSS Feed.