Written by Google’s real time messaging platform, Google Wave, to be dropped down by the end of this year.
Today on a blog post, Google says they are going to stop further development of Google Wave.
“We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.”
Google Wave, a messaging program once used by many enthusiastic crowd as disruptive communication tool, was unveiled in May 2009 at the Google I/O event in San Francisco. The product came out as invitation only service (Invites were also at sales on eBay). The service is partly email, partly Twitter and partly Instant Messaging for discussions and to work on using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Users can drag files from the desktop to a discussion which aimed to combine all elements of online communication into a single “Wave.”
Despite having loyal users and several features, “Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked,” says Google on discontinuing developing Wave as a standalone product. The post does not specify how many people signed up for or used Google Wave. The service will remain live through the end of the year.
A screenshot of Google's Wave real-time communication tool.
Google has open sourced parts of the code and says it will incorporate these features into future projects and will create tools to let users easily “liberate” their contents from Wave.
“The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.”
Well ! this creates another disappointment toward Google’s Social Media Attempts OR Is Google blindfolding Facebook for Google Me (a not-yet-launched, oft-rumored as a direct Facebook killer social network) ?