Google has decided to halt development of its collaborative communications service Google Wave, following limited take-up of the service. Launched last year at the Google I/O conference, Google Wave is a web app for real-time communication and collaboration, allowing users to share messages and work together on documents from a browser window. While the service has seen the development of related applications and a number of projects, "Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked", Google said. As a result, it will not continue developing Wave as a standalone product. The related site will be maintained at least through the end of the year, and the technology will be used 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 developing services.
