You might have heard about it already, or you might not, but this week Google introduced what it sees as the future of collaborative online communication, Google Wave. Tired of dealing with e-mail separate from IM and chat, or sharing multiple versions of documents via e-mail, or using obnoxious third parties and sending links to shared photos, or updating your blog...then Facebook...then Twitter...then Myspace...then...? Google Wave seeks to combine it all into one single interface so that all of these disparate clients and protocols are collapsed into one, making a more enjoyable experience for users and a simpler environment for developers (which will only FURTHER enhance features for users, as they build more into it). As it is pitched, it could essentially be the central social and communication app for the entire Internet, combining e-mail, chat, social networks, blogs, doc/picture/file sharing, collaboration...whatever. Even better, Google (in their typical fashion) are building it not as a proprietary Google-only scenario, but are looking to extend the protocol standards it's based on, release APIs for developers, and possibly even open-source the entire thing! So Google will start it, but any person or company will be able to build there own clients and applications into it to make it even better and foster conmpetition. AND...it's due out in beta within a mere few months' time! Sound interesting to you? Go check it out.
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