Information Madness

After its launch with great fanfare a year ago, Google announced that it is phasing out Wave, its online collaboration and communication platform. Google has announced that it will close its Google Wave service by the end of this year.

Wave is a web-based application that marries multiple forms of communication and collaboration, including chat, mail and wikis, into a unified interface. Everything inside Wave happens in real time: You can even see a comment being made as the person is typing it, character-by-character.

“Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked,” said Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president of operations, on the Google Blog. “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.” Hölzle also writes that Google is working on tools to help Google Wave users "liberate" their content from the service, so it's not lost when it shuts down.

Google Wave had generated considerable interest during its beta launch with people clamouring for invites. Wave invites were also being sold on eBay. About five million tried the Wave during its beta but the number of active users dropped drastically later. While the Wave is a powerful platform, its inherent complexity was a deterrent for lay users and this is seen as the reason behind the downfall.