Google Inc first announced the launch of Google Wave in May last year, and the Google marketing department went to great lengths to promote the real-time online communication platform. The aim of Google Wave was to facilitate online collaborations by combining e-mail communication, instant messaging and social networking. While the application made a substantial splash in the market at first with high user interest and great demand for Google Wave invitations, Google found the user adoption rate disappointing. Yesterday, the search engine giant announced the suspension of development for the Google Wave service.

While Google Wave might be washed up, the company plans to maintain the Wave website until the end of 2010 and look at applying Google Wave technology to future applications. Google CEO Eric Schmidt described Google Wave as “a very clever product”, but went on to say that many users had struggled to find a use for the service on a regular basis. Google executives were upbeat about the announcement, saying they are happy to learn from their failed attempt to corner the social networking market, and hope to adapt the technology to create newer, better applications.