Google Unveils The Google Wave

By stephen on May 28th, 2009

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Earlier today at the Google I/O conference — a major conference held in San Francisco for web developers — Google unveiled it’s latest product: a real-time, multi-user communication platform, interface and protocol known as the Google Wave. While much is still unknown about the new platform, Wave creator Lars Rasmussen did have a few things to say. He described Google Wave as “equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more,” and further describing it as “what e-mail might look like if it were invented today.” So another game-changer it appears.

For those not in the know (i.e. me until a few minutes ago), Rasmussen along with his brother Jens was also behind the creation of Google Maps. At the time their mapping creation was known as Where 2 Tech until it was bought up by Google. And not being ones to sit and wait, the Rasmussen brothers immediately began work on their next project (the Google Wave).

Rasmussen, reporting from the Official Google Blog further described the Google Wave thus:

“In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave to see how it evolved.”

According to reports, participants at Google’s I/O conference today are being given the opportunity to try out the new system, but the rest of us will have to wait until it officially comes out. Which appears to be another couple months.