Another one bites the dust
 

Details here

They have the money. They have the manpower. It's all about throwing strategic spaghetti at a shifting wall and building on what sticks.

Google's strategy has always been to throw shit against a wall and see if it sticks. They've recently acquired the social app developer Slide, they just opened a blog for small businesses, they've got Android and Google TV -- it's all disparate businesses and some work, some don't.

Google is trying to build a social media platform to compete with Facebook and Twitter, but social seems to be the one area where they've had the most problems. Orkut didn't work, Google Buzz sucks, Google Profiles is a little meh. Killing off Google Wave seems to be the next logical step in trying to tackle social again with Google Me.

Just like everyone else, I'm eager to see it, but I think there have been forces within Google that might hold them back from hitting a home run with social - hiring processes and deifying of engineering over all else to start with.

I share your reservation about Google's attempts in social networking. That train may have left the station since FB has cornered mindshare so much. It would really take a HUGELY IMPROVED user experience to even justify the hassle of migrating to a new platform. Plus FB has a huge internal ecology of traffic that's hard to beat.

Do sites like FB, Twitter, My space make money?

why to keep alive something thats not number one? :)

I thought it was the future, but they never opened it up for everyone to use.

FB makes quite a bit of money. Unlike twitter.

Twitter is making a bit of money though, they have deals they tweet about
http://twitter.com/earlybird

Interesting read here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366149,00.asp

The problem with Wave was that I signed up right away and it looked cool but then nobody else in my friend circle signed up for it.So, there was little point of me using it.

That sucks - I use wave everyday.

i think the fact Google is trying to corner the social market shows how far off base they are with the current realities of the internet and memes