Wave goodbye to Google wave.

Google Wave is dead, it's official. Wave goodbye (sorry).

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.

We tried google, we really tried. But in the end, what was google wave - other than a thing that allowed young-uns on the internet feel the same confusion old people do when they meet fancy-smancy new computers? There's a website out there dedicated to things that are easier to understand than wave.

Oh, there was hype when it came out, apple-fanboi style hype. Or a bit like the hype that surrounded Google Buzz (buzz-what?). It seems that what google does best is making something other people already did, better. See: Gmail, Google Docs, Greader and of course, search. Less fantastic google projects include Google Video, Orkut, Lively, Knol and now Wave.

Adlist, the closed door invite only mailinglist that I have been running since 1997 (with some of the original members still hanging on it) can usually chat anything to death. Even we didn't get chatty on wave. ouch.

From an viral advertising point of view, Google Wave might be used as the best example of when not to use the old "invite" buzzcreator trick. Google wave is essentially a collaborative word, video & picture-processing whiteboard online, and works best when you use it with other people. Don't stop the other people from joining with a stingy invite scheme, then. MMmkay?