Google isn’t giving up on Wave, why should they? Firstly the product was worth everything, secondly if it is to be killed, it will be a definite waste of immense amount of code, expertise and a possibility of strangling one of the biggest open source projects. Google feels exactly the same which is why it is looking forward to keep it alive. In some manner.
Google Wave as we know of now will see a makeover and will be introduced as a more complete application, which would put both the Wave Server and the Web client in a box. The details have already been shared on the Wave Developer blog and some features of the project include:


