Google is known for experimenting with lots of early stage products, and then killing them off. Early today Google killed the much hyped Wave. Eric Schmidt told reporters tonight that Wave was “a very clever product”, which it honestly was. Wave had a ton of cool features, but the product just didn’t take off the way they were hoping.

We liked the [user interface] and we liked a lot of the new features in it [but] didn’t get enough traction, so we are taking those technologies and applying them to new technologies that are not announced. We’ll get the benefit of Google Wave but it won’t be as a separate product.

I really like Eric’s stance on this. It is very smart to just give products a try and see how they turn out. I have always commended Google for this. Schmidt said Wave had a ton of traction at the beginning but just started to slow down.

Wave really was a great product, but as Eric mentioned, it was just ahead of its time. Hopefully, once Google integrates Wave’s innovations into it’s other products, more people will get to experience some of the awesome features that caused so much hype.

via CNet