It was going to be bigger than Google Maps. Now it’s deader than, well, a dead duck.

Google has announced on its blog that Google Wave, a web app that allows realtime communication and collaboration, is no more.

According to Google, the problem is that not enough people were using it. The demand wasn’t there to justify continuing to pursue it. Good on them, though, for testing the boundaries of what the market might want in future technologies.

Here is what Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow had to say:

“We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.”

You can check out Google Wave (or at least what’s left) by going here.

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