Google Wave, the search giant's failed attempt at online collaboration, will be read-only beginning January 31, 2012, and will permanently shut down on April 12 next year. In an email to Google Wave users, the Wave Team said users can still export their data until the service is turned off for good. "You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012," it said.
Those who want to continue using Wave can use open-source projects, including Apache Wave, it noted. Google also said there is an open-source project called Walkaround that includes an experimental feature that lets people import their Waves from Google. Such a feature will also work until the Wave service is turned off on April 30, 2012, it added. In a post on its help page, Google said that with the read-only stage starting January 31, 2012, users will no longer be able to create or edit waves. Marking a wave as read will also not be saved while robots that try to write to a wave will stop functioning. But by April 30, "all the Google Wave servers will be shut down and you will no longer be able to get to your waves." — TJD, GMA News
