So much for being an early adopter. After signing on to use Google Wave, a multi-platform collaboration tool for the past few months, Google has now decided to discontinue it. The company will support it only until the end of the year.

Okay, so it was free — the investment was only in time.  But as we all know, time is at a premium and learning something new and getting your partners up to speed as well, takes a lot of time and a certain amount of frustration.

Okay, so it did crash a lot — but I thought Google would figure it out. The Wave was a useful tool that allowed multiple participants to maintain an on-going record of a project and keep up to date on the latest decisions.

Okay, so it was clunky — I spent the time providing feedback on ways that I thought it would work better and did see some improvement.

Now I’m wishing that I’d spent the time finding a program where the developer has demonstrated commitment to keeping it going. Because I do think that this type of collaboration software has a place. It’s just not going to be hosted by Google.