You may have heard the name “Google Wave” thrown around recently in tech news. Google Wave is Google’s hot new product, still in development and testing via an invitation, much like how Gmail started out. But what is Google Wave? Well, let’s start there.

What Is Google Wave?

When I was trying to think of my own definition of what Google Wave can do, I ended up with “real-time, extensible communication and collaboration.” When I looked up Google’s own definition, it turned out I wasn’t far off:

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

At it’s very most basic, Google Wave can be thought of as real-time email, or really fancy instant messaging. But it’s really much more than that. Let’s define a key term or two, and then break down the definition.

Waves, Wavelets, and Blips

In Google Wave, the first unit of organization you will encounter is called a wave. A wave can be thought of as a forum topic, or a series of emails pertaining to a single topic.

Each Wave can contain wavelets, or sub-waves that have branched off the main wave, and blips, single units of communication within a wave or wavelet. When you create a wave, you can invite other people to participate in it. You can also invite individuals to wavelets, effectively giving them permission to access a certain part of a wave.

Let’s continue by breaking down the pieces of Google Wave’s abilities.

Real-Time Communication

Google Wave can be used to simply communicate with other people. If I start a wave and invite you to it, you can reply to my original blip with your own blip; I can then reply to that blip with my own. Used this way, Google Wave very much resembles email, with a few key differences.

First, communication is real time, meaning not only do I not have to press “send” or some other similar button when I am finished, but in fact, other users of a wave can see me type in real-time (unless I disallow it), allowing a more “instant message” feel to communication if so desired. Of course, the participants are welcome to come back at their leisure and respond whenever they wish.

via Wave: Google’s take on the future of communication

Secondly, participation is collective. For example, let’s imagine I have started a wave and invited my friend, Jonathan, to it. Jonathan and I have a back-and-forth about a particular issue at the office. Several blips into the conversation, we decide Jeff would be a good resource to consult. We add Jeff to the wave, and immediately Jeff has access to the entire conversation, including a “playback” feature that lets him see the blips as they were added and modified (in case the wave has branched into wavelets or edits have been made to blips).

Real-Time Collaboration

Blips in a wave are, by default, shared by any member of the wave. This means that any user that is a participant of a wave can edit any blip in the wave, effectively allowing for real-time collaboration between multiple individuals by editing the same blip at the same time. Any number of participants can edit the wave concurrently—imagine a meeting of 10 members of your department, each of them making changes to a shared wave.

But Wave’s true power comes in the final piece of the definition: extensibility.

Extensible

Google Wave is extensible in a couple of ways. The first is the notion of robots. Robots are automated users, for all intents and purposes. They are added to a wave the same way other people are, and they are programmed to carry out specific tasks. Some robots translate between languages on the fly; some robots perform other types of lookups or cross-platform postings of wave data, such as posting a wave’s data to Twitter or a blog.

Gadgets are another way to extend Google Wave. Gadgets are inserted into a specific place in a blip and provide extra functionality. This could be as simple as showing a URL in an iFrame or as complex as collaborative source code editing and highlighting, and even online games.

Looking To the Future

The future of Google Wave looks bright. Even in its current half-finished implementation, it is a powerful tool. As it becomes easier to create and install gadgets and people become more accustomed to using Wave, it has the capability to be an integral part of daily workflows. Furthermore, a protocol for Google Wave is being developed, allowing different providers to communicate with each other (much as how different companies host their own email at their domain). If you get an opportunity to try out Google Wave, I recommend you take the time to play with it and really see what it can do; also, if you have the time, the Google IO demo of Google Wave is also very interesting!