Is Google going to shut down Google Wave?

Today, on the popularity of IT resource Techcrunch came the news that Google Inc. announced the termination of support for his acclaimed Google Wave project. The team previously working on this project stops all work. Techcrunch cites the information as confirmed, although without reference to the source.

Generally speaking, it is strange that this happens - after all, Sergey Brin himself claimed that this project is a "new level of interactivity." In fact, Google Wave is partly an e-mail, partly Twitter and partly an Internet messenger. Users of the service can drag and drop various files from the desktop directly into Google Wave. The project was fully operational only in May this year, despite the fact that the first time they heard about it a year ago, in May 2009, at a conference held by Google in San Francisco.

Why is the service closed? The development team claims that the project "involves too few users that we would like to see."

To the great delight of Google Wave fans, it does not close, until, as mentioned above, support will simply be discontinued and work will not be carried out to further develop the resource. True, the Google team said that the service in the end could stop working altogether. There is no silver lining - part of the source code of the project will be published. Some major parts of the project code are already available, others will soon appear on the Web.

What will happen to the Google Wave project team in the future? It is still unknown, although the company's management promises to “transfer” this team, most of whose members are in Australia, to create another project. What kind of project? Also unknown.

I wonder if there are true users of Google Wave among the representatives of the habrasociety, those who consider this project useful and necessary? As for me, I received an invite a very long time ago, but after a couple of days of working with Wave, further acquaintance somehow did not work out - either there was not enough time, then other sources of communication attracted attention. But, of course, it is a pity that the project is being closed, without having started to work normally. Maybe the Google guys should wait a bit? Or is this some kind of joke from Techcrunch? Who knows, let's see.

The source can be found here at this link . If anyone finds it, throw a link to a Google statement, I want official confirmation.

UPD. Yes, this is not a joke from Techcrunch, there are already official confirmations, both are indicated in the comments, for convenience I transferred here. Here and here .