Google Wave looks to Change Online Communication

Google Wave made its debut today at the Google I/O developers conference, and took the conference by storm.

The buzz created has been compared to the iPhone, and conference participants can't stop talking about the demo displayed today of this revolutionary product.

Google is aiming to change the way online communication happens, by combining email, chat, media sharing, links, wiki type of format, and instant messenging (IM), all threaded in one format. Replacing not one but MANY various programs, the excitement about this development is palpable.

From Webmonkey's preview:

A user starts a “wave,” a new thread in the system. At first, it looks just like an e-mail. A wave usually starts as text, but photos can be dragged in, and videos or maps can be embedded. The user invites friends by dragging and dropping names from a list of contacts in a sidebar. New users can start leaving comments in line, setting a break point in the original text and adding a comment directly below the paragraph, photo or whatever piece of the wave they want to comment on. There’s even a built in spell-checker that’s context-sensitive.

As the new user is leaving a comment, everyone involved in the wave can see the comments being typed in, in real time, letter by letter. Edits can be made concurrently, so two or more users can see one anothers’ changes flowing in, even as they’re leaving their comments, making edits or uploading images.

And it really is instantaneous: Google is measuring Wave’s latency in the low milliseconds.

In the past few years, the use of email has depleted in favour of more short-burst communication via SMS (text messages), Facebook, Twitter, etc, but Google's Wave may bring those back to email, as it could contain all the messages into one location. Instead of communicating with someone via 5 different programs, all of these methods of communication could be contained within Wave.

Read more from Webmonkey here. Over the next few days much more is sure to be revealed, as conference attendees have special BETA access.