What is this I keep on hearing people saying that Google Wave will change the web?

I asked myself this, as I looked for more information. Finally I sat myself down and watched the 1hr 20 min video of the development team eagerly showing off their new tool to a bunch of external developers. Cool, was my reaction. So, what exactly is it? Perhaps it’s:

“A web browser based communication tool that pulls in data from any source allowing for a central depository of all online activity.”

After trawling through the video, I could see that the component parts are not revolutionary, nor is the principle of Google Wave. The technology has developed to enable a talented team to start pulling these ideas together.

Component parts

So why are the component parts are not revolutionary? If we look at the main features of Google Wave, you can see clear elements of:

• Email (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail)
• Instant Messaging (Live Messenger, Yahoo! IM, GTalk)
• Photo sharing (Flickr)
• Blogging (WordPress, Blogger)
• Document production (Word, Google Docs, Open Office)
• Searching (Google, Yahoo, Bing)
• Social media (Twitter, Facebook)

Nothing spectacular there,  but it does mean that you’ll be able to access all of this from one place. The ability to organise, edit and share all of this information in once place is handy and time saving. There are many advantages to having everything in one place.

Main features

What makes Google Wave so interesting are some of the features:

• Real-time – as you edit, type or review, these will be seen live by anyone else who is part of that wave.
• Portability – publish your wave content elsewhere, such as on your blog or website. Any changes made from Google Wave will be instant on your blog or website.
• Open sourced – much like the Google Maps with the ability to manipulate data, Google Wave has opened its doors to developers. This is intended to increase interaction and scalability.
• History playback – ability to see the development of a Wave in a chronological order by different users. Great for document collaboration.
• Advanced language capabilities – enhanced spell checking which looks at the context of a sentence (no more “your and you’re” errors). Also translation into 40 languages as you type!

This has got the online community going with the endless possibilities. But let us consider the immediate/short-term impact.

What does this mean to the average user?

If like me you use the majority of the previously mentioned online functions, then this type of tool will get you excited in areas I should not talk about here!

If you do not, then chances are you will think less of it.

The success of Google Wave rides on reducing the barriers of entry and making it as easy for all to use, like Google Maps which was intuitive and easy on the eye. But Google Wave relies on more than that, because it requires a network of people to communicate with. All of which is currently disseminated across the website.

The question is, how easily can we pull our data together and what’s the incentive to do so? The incentive for me is pretty obvious, but what about the average user?

Chances are people outside of the Google bubble will continue with their Hotmails, Yahoos, Facebooks, all sat miles apart, blissfully unaware of the Goliath that is growing right beneath their finger tips.

To conclude

In the online world we’ve been given all these great tools - email, instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter, blogging etc. - but we need somewhere to store them, a toolbox, a storage facility. Google Wave is that storage facility. Depending on how much you use these tools will determine how big your Waves are, or whether you bother to Wave at all!

It’s not going to change the online world overnight. But it will, in the beginning, make our online presence easier and more time efficient, at least it will mine!

This post was written by Jeremy Jacobs, owner of The Digital Consultant

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• Watch the full 1hr 20 min video here: