In memoriam
Google Wave
Born May 2009. Died 30 April 2012.
Google Wave passed on 30 April 2012, having lived three years as the future of collaboration. Born in May 2009, it combined email, chat, and document editing in a single real-time thread. It was invite-only. No one you knew had access. The interface was dense. The servers struggled. Users never learned what it was for. Google announced the end of development in August 2010. The service became read-only in January 2012. On 30 April the servers went dark. He is survived by every tool that does one thing well, and by the memory of a product that was right about convergence and wrong about timing.
We will stop development on Wave, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year.
Failed to achieve product-market fit
Mourned by Those who were invited, collaborators who tried to make it work, and anyone who believed that email and chat and documents could live in one place.
Google Docs, which learned to collaborate; the invite-only launch, which ensured no one you knew had access; and the memory of a product that was right about the future and wrong about the present.