After a brief flurry of initial interest, Google has suspended development of its Wave networking service, which many will now argue was doomed from the start.
The applications of the service, which was designed to be nothing less than a revolution in workplace communication, meshing together email, chat, document sharing and social networking in one handy package, were far-sighted indeed.
In my opinion it's this far-sightedness that did for Google Wave. It stumbled because it tried to replace things that people perceived no need to replace.
And let's face it, in our corner of the industry, communications providers and networking firms were never going to warm to a service that could take revenues away from phones and video-conferencing.
I certainly don't know of a single person who made a habit of using it.
But with Google intent on preserving the code and technology for future applications, I have little doubt that we will see something similar again some day.
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