The big news to hit the web today was the announcement of Google Wave at Google I/O. Described as “the e-mail of the future,” Wave is an ambitious project with a grand vision of unified communications.
A concise description of what Wave is, exactly, seems to be hard to formulate. You have to see it to understand it seems to be a growing consensus. That is a bit frustrating to those trying to conceptualize, but it may be appropriate if Wave truly is a leap forward for communication.
Tim O’Reilly has the best description I’ve come across:
Jens, Lars, and team re-imagined email and instant-messaging in a connected world, a world in which messages no longer need to be sent from one place to another, but could become a conversation in the cloud. Effectively, a message (a wave) is a shared communications space with elements drawn from email, instant messaging, social networking, and even wikis.
TechCrunch also has an extensive rundown of Wave and the capabilities that were demonstrated today.
Wave is the result of a two-year long effort led by Lars and Jens Rasmussen, the creators of what became Google Maps. Their success on that project gave them the opportunity to pursue this open-ended idea. While they have raised the hype meter to new levels, only time will tell if they have another hit on their hands.
Wave remains in the prototype stage at this juncture. It was announced at a developer conference for a reason: feedback is needed from the engineering community. For it to gain public acceptance, developers will need to embrace it and build capabilities around it.
My interest has certainly been piqued. I’ve spent the day reading articles, watching videos, and researching specifications. Expect follow-up posts with more detailed thoughts.
