Google Wave ends before it really began

Google announced yesterday that it was suspending all further development on Google Wave, the web app for real time communication and collaboration that everyone had heard about but very few actually tried.

While Wave debuted to wild acclaim a year ago, it failed to gain much traction amongst ordinary users, and was probably best known for people’s inability to describe what it was actually for. The app will remain available for use until the end of the year, but will receive no further investment from Google.

But far from lamenting the failure and coming up with numerous excuses, Google sought to cast the exercise in a positive light. “We celebrate our failures,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, when addressing reporters at the Techonomy conference yesterday. He went on to say that “this is a company where it is absolutely OK to try something that is very hard, have it not be successful, take the learning and apply it to something new.”

Google Wave was developed by a team based in Australia who were responsible for the runaway hit, Google Maps. They were given a greenlight to develop Wave when they approached Google HQ with a simple pitch which essentially stated they wanted to do something “new and game-changing but we can’t even tell you what it is.”

The lessons learned and the technology developed will not go to waste, according to Google’s Official Blog. “The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began”.

Speculation is rife on the net that the end of Google Wave is another signal that Google are preparing the groundwork for an assault on social media, in the form of the much speculated about Google Me.

Only time will tell if this is the end, or just another beginning.