I would hope to never disagree with you - a very smart fellow on here. I however believe Google has put multiplies more money and 'skin in the game' when it comes to Google+... examples of what I think are the way they are pushing it so aggressively by integrating it everywhere. Wave was a pretty large launch I'll admit - but it still felt like an experiment - It felt like to me Google has said publicly in many ways 'This is how we are competing with Facebook and we'll stick with it till it works' - pertaining to Google +

Google Buzz was lot softer launch and commitment...

Checkout is still alive right?

*I do miss wave, my friends and I (with office jobs)used it as a chat channel throughout the workday. We have since moved to hall.com - wave still beats hall though...

Did you try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave?

>Apache Wave is a software framework for real-time collaborative editing online. Google originally developed it as Google Wave.[1] It was announced at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. [...]

>Development was handed over to the Apache Software Foundation which started to develop a server-based product called Wave in a Box.

When I gave it a whirl back when wave was cancelled - it felt half baked.. Then again my skills are half baked as well :)

Checkout is still around; they just renamed it Wallet to coincide with their mobile app.