Last year we were all (well some of us) eagerly awaiting the arrival of the latest technological marvel from Google…..Wave. Well it arrived and people were fighting for invites to get access to the beta version. Invites were even being sold on ebay such was the excitement and hype surrounding Google Wave. The idea behind Google Wave was to change the way we think about communicating over the web by making the process much more interactive and in real time. This was through the functionality such as live typying, being able to drag and drop files, throw in a Google Map and generally “set a high bar to what was possible with a web browser”.
It transpires that after the initial furore to Google Wave the reaction from users has been one of confusion. There is no doubting the cleverness of the technology or it potential but whatever the reason wave was not adopted by users. The result is that Google is to cease development of Wave with only maintenance of the site taking place to the end of the year. Google reckon that they have learnt a lot from developing Wave and intend to use the technology in future applications.
More information is available here.