Over a year ago, Google decided to pull the plug on Google Wave, a chat/email hybrid service that was supposed to change the way we communicated online, but it never caught on. Google has finally revealed details on what it plans on doing to the service.
As you can see from the video above, Google had high hopes for Google Wave. Launched in 2009, Google Wave was intended to be a chat/email hybrid service and was supposed to change the way we communicated online. However, it never caught on and Google ended up pulling the plug on it in August of last year. But now, Google has sent out an official email detailing what it plans on doing with the service.
“More than a year ago, we announced that Google Wave would no longer be developed as a separate product. At the time, we committed to maintaining the site at least through to the end of 2010. Today, we are sharing the specific dates for ending this maintenance period and shutting down Wave. As of January 31, 2012, all waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012. You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012,” the email states.
Google suggests you try out Apache Wave as an open source alternative to Google Wave. In fact, there is also an open source project called Walkaround that allows you to import all of your Waves from Google, although experimental.
So, in case you missed it, Google Wave will be shut down completely on April 30th, of 2012.
