More than a year ago Google announced it would be ending the not so popular Wave service. Originally Google Wave was an intriguing platform that was touted as being the next “email.” Google Wave was designed to be part email, part blog, and part social network. The platform was intended to be a collaboration tool—similar to Microsoft Sharepoint, where you could “play” and email and rewind a conversation. Despite some initial excitement, Google Wave was never able to get a “Wave” of users and amounted to nothing more than a ripple in the pond.
Recently Google shared the final service date for the Wave platform, “As of January 31, 2012, all Waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012.”
Between the read-only date and the final date of service, Wavers (a nickname Google gave to Wave platform users) will have the option to export their waves as PDFs. Google recommends Wavers export any “important data” that might be in their Wave account.
For those who loved their Wave service, there are a number of open source projects, including Apache Wave and Walkaround. Walkaround includes an experimental feature that will let Wavers import all their Waves until the Wave service is turned off on April 30, 2012.
For those who never caught the Wave and want to know what all the fuss was about, here’s a video explaining what it is (was?, will have been?)
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