Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google as a Stanford University research project in 1996. Just over ten years later the word google was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a verb meaning, “to use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet.” This is just one example of how Google have time and again managed to change the world and the way we communicate. Their latest effort to do just this is certainly one of their most ambitious to date.
Google Wave was announced in May with the modest goal of replacing email, instant messaging and most other tools we currently use to communicate online. Google describes their new product as a tool for “real-time communication and collaboration”.
Users of Google Wave will be able to create and share ‘waves’ with one or more of their friends. Waves are part-conversation, part-document and incredibly flexible. Depending on the way a wave is used it can function like a traditional email conversation, with parties replying to each other in their own time. Waves update in real-time though, so if two people have the same wave open at the same time they can use it like an instant message conversation. The same can be done if three people are using a wave or four people or five or – you get the idea.
Waves can also be used to create collaborative documents, similar to the already existing Google Docs though with a few improvements, where users can edit each others’ work. Waves can also have photos and videos embedded in them directly.
The product was announced at the Google I/O conference on May 29th of this year. You wouldn’t be to blame for thinking that it was another of Google’s famous hoaxes, which in the past have included the bogus beverage Google Gulp and Google TiSP, a service that purported to provide Google customers high speed broadband access through their toilet.
Wave is no hoax however, as you will see if you have the stamina to watch their eighty minute video on it – yes, eighty minutes. If you can get through the less-than-perfect presentational skills of Google’s developers, you will realise that Wave has the potential to do exactly what they say it will: it could completely change the way that we communicate and interact.
Google have good reason to want to create something to replace email. The email protocol used today was developed in 1982 for a very different Internet, one that didn’t even have web pages. Over the last three decades the ways in which we communicate via the Internet have changed drastically yet we still use email, a communication method that is highly susceptible to spam and fraud.
On top of the basic functionality of Wave as described earlier, there are plenty of bells and whistles to attract the masses – a vital step in the process of replacing email. Web developers are able to write their own ‘robots’ for Google Wave.
These robots are little applications that can be added to waves to perform certain functions. Some robots already demonstrated with Wave include polls for Wave users to vote, Google Maps that can be inserted and collaboratively edited, and an automatic translator that can translate conversations between forty different languages in real time.
Anyone with the skills can develop a new robot for Google Wave. Accounts were given to web developers this June and so far they have developed a plethora of widgets. Some of these independently developed applications include the Ribbit Conference Gadget, used to conduct real-time audio conference calls in a wave, LabPixies’ Sudoku Gadget, used to collaboratively solve Sudoku puzzles in a wave, and Mediawiki Wave, used to make edits to Wikipedia articles via waves. There are countless other uses for these robots, including having widely-used web applications such as Facebook and Twitter integrated with Google Wave.
One of the most promising parts of Google Wave, and the part that guarantees its potential to usurp email, is that Wave is what is known as an open protocol. Building on the company’s unofficial motto of ‘don’t be evil’ Google will be releasing the majority of the code behind Google Wave to anyone that wants it.
This means that anyone can set up their own customised Wave system, completely independent of Google. However, all these independent “Wave providers” will be able to interact with each other, much like how you can email a Hotmail account from a Gmail account. Five years from now you could find yourself ‘waving’ your friends from your Microsoft Wave account, while they use their Google, Apple or even Tesco Value Wave accounts.
At this stage you may be thinking about getting a Google Wave account of your own, but you may have to wait a while. The current ‘preview release’ version of Wave accounts are currently being given out on an invite-only basis, so you’ll need to find someone who already has an account to get one of your own. You can also visit the Google Wave site and request an invitation directly from Google, though this is basically the equivalent of begging.
Perhaps ten years from now we’ll be looking at another Google-related additional to the Oxford English Dictionary – to wave, v. “to communicate with a person by Wave Federation Protocol.”
You can find more information and sign up for an invitation for Google Wave at wave.google.com.
