Google Wave had developed a fairly loyal following in its short life, but there never seemed to be universal understanding of just what it was meant to do. When asked, many thought it was to be a chat platform, others a document sharing application. It didn’t help that Buzz came about and offered some overlapping capabilities.And it seems even Google wasn’t sure how to promote it.

Today  Urs Hölzle, Google senior vice president for operations, posted the announcement in the official Google Blog that they were throwing in the towel on Wave and would not be developing it any further as a stand alone application. Since parts of Wave were popular, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Google incorporating what they learned into other Google products.