Although Google had hoped to revolutionize email and group collaboration with the tool, most users didn't know what they should do with it and seldom did more than simply register an account. It didn't help that Google introduced the tool with a brand new vocabulary, such as "blips" and "wavelets." It also required users to register a new email-like address "your-user-name@googlewave.com" instead of using existing Gmail accounts, and it reproduced a lot of the types of tools that existed elsewhere.
Rather than continue development on Google Wave, Google decided to use portions in existing tools and leave other portions available for possible development by the open source community.
