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Google pulls plug on Wave, but not in Chrome

Google has finally closed the doors on its Wave social networking service but is still allowing Google Chrome users to access the pages in read-only mode.The company said it was pulling the plug on the ill-fated Wave project in November 2011, citing 30 April as the last day that users would still be able to access their Waves, although it had not been actively developing it since late 2010.
Written by Ben Woods, Contributor

Google has finally closed the doors on its Wave social networking service but is still allowing Google Chrome users to access the pages in read-only mode.

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The company said it was pulling the plug on the ill-fated Wave project in November 2011, citing 30 April as the last day that users would still be able to access their Waves, although it had not been actively developing it since late 2010.

However, at the time of writing the service is still accessible in read-only mode and is still offering users the option of exporting individual Waves as an HTML or PDF file for users visiting with the Google Chrome browser. Visiting wave.google.com using Internet Explorer or Firefox redirected ZDNet UK to the closure information page.

Google had not responded to a request for comment.

Despite a lack of enthusiasm for the Wave service under Google's stewardship, the project has continued as an open-source project as part of the Apache Foundation and is now called Apache Wave. The project is currently in incubation stage but developers can contribute to the Google Wave Protocol project.

While the project did not receive great support from users under Google it did provide inspiration for features that made it into other Google projects, such as the collaborative working features now found in Google Docs.

Since announcing the closure of Wave, Google is hoping that Google+ can fulfill its social networking ambitions.

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