The (Google) Wave goodbye

Google announced today that its experimental product, Google Wave will be discontinued in the near future and that development had ceased on it. It was a surprise although not a shock. The Wave had a much heralded launch[link 1][link 2] last year at the Google I/O conference. Attendees tweeted and blogged about this spectacular new Google offering that could and would change the way we communicate forever.As an early adopter of the tool, I was unsure of how to make good use of it. Soon I found out that I was not alone. The Wave was an excellent and cool product that had no obvious use. I am sure creative people found ways to make best use of this cool piece of software but for the lay person like me, it was a challenge to figure out what to do with it. I forced myself to migrate some common Google Docs and Gmail related tasks to the Wave hoping for a productivity boost. No such luck. The Google Wave link languished in my bookmarks waiting for the day it will be chosen to be used.To be fair to Google, this was an experimental product whose ideas and code probably will creep into other Google offerings and make them better. But as a standalone product, the Wave did not create a wave. Instead, it will go down as one of the more high profile failures of Google. For what its worth, it was definitely an interesting approach to online communication and integrating its static and dynamic forms into one seamless unit.