When Google launched Google Wave last year, it was one of the most hyped up products the tech giant put out. Communications will be redefined, Google said, and online collaboration between people will change forever.

But not anymore. The Wave didn’t really catch on the way Google had hoped, and as of 4 August, the company discontinued support and development for the short-lived tool.

Senior vice president of operations at Google Urs Hölzle wrote in a blog post that despite numerous fans, “Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked”.

Google isn’t completely pulling the plug, though. Google Wave’s code are available as open source, so third-party developers can still try to make it work. The technology in Wave will also be extended for use in other Google projects.

“We will work on tools so that users can easily ‘liberate’ their content from Wave,” wrote Hölzle.

The dropping of Wave underscores Google’s failure at social media so far, and the tool now joins Google Lively (What? Never heard of it?) and many others in the long line of let-downs.

But with Google reportedly working on a brand new ‘Facebook killer’, Google Me, they might just have a few ideas for the social left.

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