31

May

Blown Away: Google’s New ‘Wave’ Tool May Just Revolutionize Online Communication

Posted by: Jeremy Reither

On Wednesday Google announced a new product they’re planning to launch later this year – called Wave – which they sort of implied has the ability to replace email as the most dominant form of communication on the internet. Let me repeat that – they think that with this new tool they can make email a thing of the past. And based on their 80 minute technical video demo (below), I honestly think they might be able to pull that off – that’s how amazing Wave looks.

Try to imagine a communication tool that is like Email, but allows instantaneous conversations like instant messenger (IM), and more detailed document collaboration than Google Docs. Imagine that this tool integrates with Twitter, your blog, Google maps, and more – and that’s just the stuff Google is including in the plain version. Wave is going to be “open source” software, which means non-Google engineers will have access to the code, and will be able to create their own features, including wiki’s, private label versions, games, and an infinite number of other add-ons to share with other users.

You can sort of get a feel for what Wave is intended to do by just watching the first 15 minutes of the demo video, but if you can suffer through a few geeky jokes, and a bit of tech talk, then the whole 80 minutes is actually worth watching.

Since relatively few people have been able to use Wave (most online reviews are based on the same video demo you see below, rather than hands on testing), you might as well just watch this demo and see for yourself what the fuss is all about. Personally, I was blown away.

Typically I don’t write much about new technology announcements on this blog, but when you’re dealing with something that affects as many people as email does, I figured some of our readers might be interested. If you want some more technical reviews, check out TechCrunch‘s and Mashable‘s coverage.