Yes, Google Wave is dead — but it won’t fully flatline until some time in 2011, Google confirmed in a post today. Well actually, their words were that wave.google.com (the front-end product) “will be available at least through the end of the year.” But yes, you can probably expect them to shut it down sometime in 2011.
But before that happens, Google is also promising that “there will be ways to export your waves before the end of the year.” So if you have been one of the seemingly few users who has been using Wave a lot, there will be a way to get the data you created out of it. It’s not yet clear what format this will be in, but we’re going to assume some sort of standard export file type.
Google also says they’re continuing to look “at ways to continue and extend Wave technology in other Google products.” Does that mean the new social product known as Google Me? We shall see. They also reiterate that they will be “open sourcing more of our code and providing support for our loyal users and Apps customers.”
Finally, the team thanked the outpouring of support from projects such as savegooglewave.com. Sadly, it looks like the nice words and nearly 42,000 thumbs up won’t be enough to stop the execution.
[photo: flickr/mendhak]