Wave Goodbye to Google Wave



Google Wave was once the hot, new, exciting thing from Google. When it first came out, I remember hesitating before jumping into it because I was having difficultly understanding just what, exactly, Google Wave was supposed to be used for. Personally, I found the interface to be counterintuitive. I recall hearing people say “I’m on Google Wave. Now… what do I do with it?”.

It seems that I wasn’t the only one who was confused about what to do with Google Wave. Over a year ago, Google decided to stop developing Google Wave as a separate product. In November of 2011, Google sent an email to users of Google Wave that included specific dates that they had selected for ending the maintenance period for this product, as they worked towards shutting down Google Wave forever.

Right now, you can still access Google Wave, but it is in read-only mode, and cannot be added to. I got an email from Google today that was a reminder that they will turn off Google Wave, for good, on April 30, 2012. Wave goodbye as Google Wave rides off into the sunset.

As I said, I never managed to find much of a use for Google Wave. If you did, then you need to be aware that you can continue to export individual waves using the PDF export feature until Google Wave is turned off. Exporting it will allow you to keep that information, even after Google Wave is gone. It is recommended that you export your data from Google Wave before April 30, 2012.

Google also has some suggestions about other things that you can use in case you find yourself grieving the loss of Google Wave. Both of them are open source projects. One is Apache Wave, which has just entered its incubation period. When Google announced that they would stop developing Google Wave, it handed it over to the Apache Software Foundation.

The other is Walkaround, which is made by Google. There is an experimental feature in Walkaround that will let you import all of your waves from Google Wave. The feature has some limitations but, some users might find this option to be better for them than downloading their wave in a PDF format would be. If you cannot bear the thought of having the information you posted on Google Wave disappear, there are options that will allow you to keep it.

Image: Google by BigStock


2 thoughts on “Wave Goodbye to Google Wave

  1. Headnspace…

    I, and some of my friends, tried to set up a wave that we hoped would function like a book discussion group. One of my friends figured out how to start it, and a lot of us were able to figure out how to join it. Several people added something to it. However, I found it difficult to search through in order to find out what books were being discussed, or when something new had been added to the wave. I did not find a way to easily scan through it for a certain book title or for comments made by a specific person. We all kind of just slowly stopped using it.

    My guess is that perhaps Google Wave was supposed to allow users to add to a shared wave, much like how you can create a Google Document and add your friend to it, and have everyone comment in one place. In my experience, Google Documents works worlds better than Google Wave did. I frequently use Google Documents.

  2. quoting ” As I said, I never managed to find much of a use for Google Wave”

    And you still didn’t say what it was used for. So does that mean you never figured it out either?
    (I never used it, and haven’t really seen what it was used for while casual web browsing)

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