Google Wave
Just one of Google's many cancelled products this year, Wave was indicative of the growing pains the company is experiencing as it tries to expand beyond its dominant Internet search presence. Wave was an innovative product -- a real-time collaboration platform that appeared to combine instant messaging, e-mail and social media in one product.
But Wave's problem was that it seemed to offer so much that users didn't know exactly what to use it for, and Google failed to effectively communicate the value of the product. The company also failed to tie Wave together with other products like Google Apps to form a cohesive ecosystem. As a result, Wave crashed; Google announced last month that all Wave development had stopped and the product code would be handed over to the Apache Software Foundation (joining Oracle's OpenOffice.Org).
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