But it’s not the 1920s and I’m not in Chicago, so I’m writing a blog post about Google instead. Read all about it.

Google Wave is Dead

It truly is a sad, sad day. Wave has only been out of the invite-only phase for a couple of months and now Google has announced that it will no longer be supporting it, saying:

“Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. 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.”

So I’ve got a year left to continue not using it. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with my free will being taken away though – I want my not using Wave to be my choice, not Google’s. Damn the Man. It’s also rather jarring to look back on the glassy-eyed optimism displayed in the promotional video embedded in David’s ‘Google Wave First Impressions News Round-up’ post from last year. Wonder what those two think about it?

New Style Google Images

Google Images has had a bit of a makeover this week, as well as the addition of some new functionality. There are now many more images displayed in the same amount of space, which makes it a lot easier to find the image you’re looking for. Here’s the old style results page:

Google has also eliminated the concept of having pages of results. Rather than having to click through to another page, you can simply keep scrolling down and the page will populate itself with images that load on the page as you get closer to them, rather than having to wait for the system to load hundreds of images. It’s a nice addition and it works well.

Net Neutrality Threatened?

Talks are currently being held in the US to discuss the future of net neutrality (where all pages on the Web are treated the same in terms of priority and speed). It has been reported by The Guardian and the New York Times that Google and Verizon were very close to a deal to end net neutrality. From The Guardian piece:

“Such a deal would mean the information superhighway may be about to get a lot faster for those willing to pay. YouTube, owned by Google, for example, would pay a charge to an internet service provider (ISP) in return for its content being fast-tracked to consumers.”

This is a pretty controversial issue, which could potentially give a lot more power to bigger companies and lead to consumers having to pay twice for access to the Internet.

And the story doesn’t stop there. On its Twitter stream yesterday, Google refuted claims by the New York Times that it was in talks with Verizon with this tweet:

Exciting stuff. Clearly this story hasn’t fully played out, so we’ll all have to keep watching.

And that’s it.

For those who have had no exposure to it thus far, Google Wave is a communication and collaboration tool, but with impressive versatility and power as the official introduction video demonstrates:

While it’s still early days (Wave is officially in ‘preview’ mode at the moment, but already has “several hundred thousand” users according to co-developer Lars Rasmussen), some genuinely creative and inspired uses of Google Wave have already started appearing. Sites such as Mashable have been reporting on Wave being used for customer service, live-annotating conferences and even acting as the engine for online role-playing games.

Ars Technica has published perhaps the most in-depth write-up thus far, concluding that Google Wave “is already showing signs of success as a catalyst for accelerating our ascent towards the Internet of the future”. Not all coverage has been positive, however: Robert Scoble is certainly not a fan, going so far as to claim that “Google’s Wave will crash hard onto the beach of overhype” and that it “brings the worst of email and IM together: unproductivity”.

There’s no doubting that Wave will have a huge impact one way or another when it finally makes its way into general release, but as an example of generating online buzz it is already an unqualified success. We’ll be having a more in-depth look at Google Wave’s features and all the potential uses for it from a Social Media and marketing point of view in the near future.