After a very long testing period, the big-G decided to stop the development of Google Wave. Personally, I feel really sad.

Google Wave was envisioned to replace e-mail and be the ultimate collaboration tool. Unfortunately, the response from the public was unsatisfactory. The people behind Wave finally gave the go signal to cancel the project.

Here’s an excerpt from the official Google blog.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. 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.

Wave started in September 2009 with over a 100,000 users. Internet geeks crowded around to get a chance for an invitation to the test out the service. Which wasn’t much of a surprise since, after all, Google promised to reinvent the e-Mail.

Wave is a dynamic document. Changes appear real time so the file that is constantly changing as users write responses and additions to it. Instead of sending the document to a recipient, contacts will be invited to a Wave. Every change is stored as a “blip”. Here you can watch in real time, as other types in a wave participant response. The timing of the communication is stored as a film and can be played with a “Playback” button. In this way, for example, several members of a working group to exchange closely on joint projects.

I guess not everything Google touches is a success ~ Pol