It is not a big surprise to hear that Google make this decision…
IMHO Google Waves never took off at all, but is still sad to see that a project that didn’t made its way..
The idea of collaboration system reminds me of something, back in 2003 when I was in Sydney University, I designed something rather similar to Google Waves in an assignment, it was a collaboration portal based on Macromeida Flash, XML, CGI, mySQL for graphics designer to work collaboratively with sync/async timezone and rich graphical content, mock up and prototype was done, since the task of the project was to demo the idea only, so full function code was never done…
I do love the idea of a good online collaboration tools, if I have the time, I sure would try once more on that never finished prototype..(let me see can I still find that somewhere in the hard drives…)
Anyway, R.I.P Google Waves 2010….