Google pulls plug on Wave

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Google has confirmed it will stop developing its Wave communication tool after just over a year of working on the project.

The tool, which combined email, social networking and blogging – amongst other social media tools – was unveiled at Google’s I/O conference last year and the company was publicly very excited about what it could achieve.

However, today Google has admitted it has not seen the same enthusiasm from users.

“Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked,” wrote Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of operations and a Google Fellow, on the Official Google blog.

“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.”

Hölzle confirmed that as the code was already open source, other developers and customers can carry on using the functions in their own projects and “continue the innovation we began.”

He concluded: “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.”

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