Yesterday at Google I/O (Google’s annual developer event), the search engine unveiled a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web: Google Wave.
This is set to be a real-time communication platform. If you’re like me, you’re probably saying “that doesn’t explain anything!” So let’s dive in and take a closer look.
What is Google Wave?
Stop and think about all the different forms of online communication you engage in on a daily, weekly or monthly basis — email, web chat, instant messaging, social networking, wikis and more. Now imagine if you could take the best aspects of each, and combine them to create one platform. Essentially, that’s what Google Wave does (and is).
The idea behind Google wave is to unify communication on the web.
What Kind of Features Will It Offer?
According to Mashable, Google Wave will offer the following features:
- Real-Time: You will be able to see what your friends are typing as they are typing, character by character.
- Embeddability: You can embed a wave on blogs and websites.
- Applications and Extensions: Apps can be built in waves, much like an app can be built in Facebook.
- Wiki Functionality: Want to edit or comment on something someone has said? Go for it! In Google Wave, all conversations are public, and can be edited by anyone.
- Open Source: That’s right, the Google Wave code will be open source.
- Playback: You will be able to “playback” any part of a wave, to see what was said.
- Natural Language: Google Wave will correct spelling and auto-translate.
- Drag-and-Drop File Sharing: There will be no attachments in Google Wave. Just drag a file, drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.
- And a lot more.
That Sounds Great. But What’s a Wave?
According to Google, a wave is equal parts conversation and document. In other words, people can communicate and work together with text, photos, videos, maps and more. It’s shared, meaning any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit content, etc. And don’t forget — it’s live.
Ben Parr at Mashable further breaks it down by comparing a wave to instant messaging, saying “that it’s like your entire instant messaging (IM) history with someone.”
Who Came Up With This?
Google Wave came from the minds of a development team from Sydney, Australia — that was also quite involved with the development of Google Maps. Some names that stick out on the team are brothers Jens and Lars Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon. I, for one, can’t wait to see what they will come up with next!
Google Wave is expected to be ready for public consumption later this year.
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Very nice but I wonder how other email providers and social networks will respond to them, unless Google makes a deal of some sort.
Since I am new to all this sounds like it might make it easier to be in several social media environments at the same time. Hope so.
I believe the term “Wave” as a form of communication is already used by the TV show Firefly. Google apparently are Joss Whedon fans.
I appreciate very much your efforts to explain the details of Google Wave. this sounds new for me but reading your article has seemed to make it clearer. i love the information.
Earrings – you make a very good point. It will be interesting to see the response.
David – I agree. It will be nice not to have to log-in to so many different social networks. Hope that’s true!
Amerist – It’s interesting where we get our inspiration.
Siktus – Glad it helped.