Google has reassured users that they can still export waves as PDF files until it’s closed down completely on April 30, 2011

Marty, set a course for April 30th 2011.

I don't understand why people are making such a deal out this. This just shows that Google try new things and ditch stuff thats not used - Microsoft/Apple/Adobe etc do this all the time.

Also gears is now not needed as its functionality is in HTML5 so its pointless to keep supporting it.

My only experience I've ever had with Wave is searching through my Gmail options to find how to hide the icon! :-) It basically just showed people's twitter updates, it seems, so was quite pointless for me. Although I'm sure I was missing something!

blizeH
My only experience I've ever had with Wave is searching through my Gmail options to find how to hide the icon! :-) It basically just showed people's twitter updates, it seems, so was quite pointless for me. Although I'm sure I was missing something!

You're thinking of Buzz. Wave is an XMPP extension which can group messages together. Kinda like IM, email, and usenet rolled into one. It fell flat on its face because Google mismanaged its rollout.

mismanaged it's rollout??
I like to think that I stay informed on what various companies are launching and I had no idea that these things even existed (except gears), not that I would have had use for them but if people don't know about them, they won't use them.

They need to be careful. Some companies (like the one I work for) are paying google a fair dollop of cash for google docs / apps and integration with addons like this is part of the package. Expecting people to pay for moving their productivity suites to a cloud based system then doing stuff like this - makes old skool locally hosted MS products more tempting.

I'm not surprised that Wave is dead. My impression of it was that it was a highly innovative product, but I had no idea in which situation I would ever find a legitimate use for it.