14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s announcement that it will halt all development on Wave and that it may shut down the servers altogether come next year may have come as a surprise, but it didn’t exactly send shock waves in the tech world. That’s because most people didn’t use the product, the reason why Google is shutting it down in the first place. But, several million people have signed up for Wave and, at least some of them are using it, so a move like “Save Google Wave” was to be expected.
Save Google Wave is a website created to, well, save Google Wave, to get people to show their support for the product. People can click on a button to show their support and tweet about the campaign to raise awareness.
“If you think that Google Wave should be saved give us a Thumbs Up! When we heard the news about Google Wave being shut down, we were devastated. Google Wave is an invaluable tool that we use every day to keep track and collaborate on projects (in real-time). Please help us to keep it alive and spread the word: SAVE GOOGLE WAVE,” the site’s homepage reads.
So far, close to 20,000 people have clicked the “Thumbs Up” button to show they want to keep Google Wave alive. A few hundred have also retweeted the campaign message. The site has just been setup, but these aren’t overwhelming numbers by any count. Maybe the media coverage will help Wave users find it and organize themselves to save the communications and collaboration service.
Google Wave, to the ones that understood it and used it to its full potential, proved invaluable and there aren’t any alternatives on the market. Novell, which created the Pulse collaboration tool based on Wave, is moving ahead and will continue to support and develop the app, but it targets the enterprise market. However, since many of the components used by Wave are open-source, it is highly likely that the project will live on in some form, even the Save Google Wave campaign won’t prove too successful.