What is Google Wave?

In the 1960s, one of the first emails was sent and received. This method of communication drastically changed the way we communicate. However, since then, email has stayed relatively the same.

Fast forward more than 40 years later and meet Google Wave. The team behind Google Wave describes it as “what email would look like if it were invented today.” Unlike email, users are able to communicate and collaborate with one another in real-time with text, photos, videos, and much more.

But what does this all even really mean?

Meeting Google Wave For the First Time

When you send an email to someone and they respond back to you, multiple copies of the email are sent, stored, and received. If you continue this conversation, the copies of this email quickly accumulate in your and the other person’s inbox and other folders. Google Wave’s solution is too eliminate multiple copies of a conversation into one live document known as a “wave.”

Multiple users can be added to a wave. Again, rather than CC’ing multiple people in an email (thus creating even more copies of the email), a group of people can participate and collaborate in one central conversation.

Any changes made to a wave are updated in real-time. So that means if I am participating in a wave with Jenny and Tim, and they are online the same time I’m online, if I add text to the wave, they see my typed additions letter-for-letter as I’m typing them.

If Jenny or Tim wanted, they could respond directly inline to what I wrote, add to, or even edit what I wrote. They could also add a video, photo, map, or other extensions to the wave. If they wanted to be updated on the revisions of the wave, they could play back the wave from the start of its creation to its present state.

Google Wave Seems So Confusing

My first experience with Google Wave was quite a bit confusing and intimidating. I’ve heard this has been a similar experience for others too.

Although Google Wave was partly inspired by a desire to create “the future of email,” it can’t quite be compared to email for the reason that rather than sending and receiving a email you are actually participating in a conversation centralized to one live document. Yet, at the same time, you can’t quite compare Wave to a Word document because it functions as a live conversation of sorts and not a static document.

All to say, Google Wave tends to be confusing because it’s hard to pin-point where exactly Wave fits in since it is so different. Yet this is exactly what makes Wave so appealing.

It’s true that Wave isn’t fully finished yet and is still in the works. Surely it is rough around the edges and needs some work. It’ll be interesting to see if it has the power to shape the way we communicate like email did 40 years ago.

If you are interested in giving it a try, you can sign-up to be invited to preview it here.