Google Wave Adds Communications and Collaboration to Google Product Mix

By Gary Burge | Published: May 28, 2009

Today at Google I/O, Google announced Google Wave, a new web product the search giant is calling “a new platform built around hosted conversations called waves.”

Google Wave client

Google Wave client

Information is still coming out of the presentation, but it appears that Google Wave:

  • has a Gmail like browser interface and involves both Gmail contacts and Wave contacts
  • has a preliminary API to allow third parties access and Google is establishing a Google Wave Federation Project to formalize vendor interactions
  • allows real time collaboration between multiple users one a single document, with each user’s edits merged in real time

Over at Google Code Blog, they explain it this way:

“…anyone can build a wave server and interoperate, much like anyone can run their own SMTP server. The wave protocol is open to contributions by the broader community with the goal to continue to improve how we share information, together. If you’re interested in getting involved, here are a few things you should check out on www.waveprotocol.org.”

Here are some Google Wave links:

What’s unknown at the moment is whether Google Wave Federation Project and Google Wave APIs can federate something besides shared Google Doc — say Dave Winner’s Millions of (Twitter-like) Identi.ca servers.

Update

More reaction to Google Wave:

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  • About Gary Burge

    I am a graying web programmer, techno-activist, romantic idealist, who never quite left the sixties, even though I became quite successful in the Internet space.

    My business philosphy is different now than when I toiled in the bigco world. About a decade ago I experienced a life-altering epiphany: I was sacrificing my personal life and health to feed a corporate monster.

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