Google Wave

trogdor9

Looks like this is the end of the line for Google Wave. That's unfortunate, but I don't feel like I'll miss it very much.

We have always pursued innovative projects because we want to drive breakthroughs in computer science that dramatically improve our users’ lives. Last year at Google I/O, when we launched our developer preview of Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. We showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even “playback” the history of changes—all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops.

We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code.

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. 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. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web.

Sail

I don't feel like I'll miss it very much.

Victor Frost

I don't feel like I'll miss it very much.

Ditto, BUT THEY FUCKING KILLED LIVELY AND FOR THAT THEY CANNOT BE FORGIVEN.

Oh, who am I kidding? I love you google.

Viga

Meh. Not I liked I used it.

Sail

Lively was terrible.

Geo

I'm gonna miss it greatly. I felt it would have been a great tool for collaboration if more people had just gotten into the habit of using it more.

WindUpBird

Meh.

trogdor9

I think it's more important that they keep working on Google Docs, which now has the same simultaneous editing capabilities as Wave.

Starfox

Something like wave is, uh, back? I haven't tried it yet, but reading the description, Wave is the first thing that sprung to mind.

Daikun

Starfox said:

Something like wave is, uh, back? I haven't tried it yet, but reading the description, Wave is the first thing that sprung to mind.

If you want the original Wave, Apache owns it now. Google donated it to them some time after they gave up development on it.

I find it interesting that they'd renew their interest in a project like this.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

Spaces isn't like Wave - a Space is more like a shared Pinterest board or, plausibly, a subreddit.

Source: I literally work on testing for Spaces.

Neito

Spaces sounds more like what Rooms wanted to be, but with some more reasoning behind it.

Edit: More like rooms than Wave, not what Linkigi said.