Google Wave is not dead yet - now at Apache
waveprotocol.org
waveprotocol.org
But I think the UI was 60% of the problem. When I first started using it, my brain started to hurt. They didn't even follow the golden rule. They had 2 same width columns in there. And everything looked cluttered and complex. Not very intuitive at all.
Another issue with it was confusing marketing. They called it e-mail 2.0, when it was nothing like that. People used it more as a collaboration tool. I had to use it every day for 6 months, too, and I didn't like using it at all.
Now, whoever even compares Google+ with Wave and says Google+ might fail the same as Wave, simply doesn't get it. They are worlds apart. From the moment I even saw the video ads, I had the opposite feeling about it than I had about Wave - a very positive feeling. And I keep having it after using it many hours a day.
Both Wave and OO.o are fairy complex projects and I'm afraid that the pace of their development will suffer severely without a strong company backing.
Wave, OpenSocial, OpenOffice: a bunch of great open ideas that never got support from their original corporate overlords. So they're dumped into the Apache Incubator, where they die a slow death.
It's really a shame. I remember investigating a project that would have solved a big need I had at the time, but was worried about a couple of bugs. I remember almost going with it, since I had faith that an Apache-backed product wouldn't langish. 18 months later still no commits.