Google I/O, a conference for web developers using Google and open web technologies, is going on right now. Google has taken this opportunity to introduce what could be a major shift in how we communicate online, called Google Wave. As its developers (the same guys who invented Google Maps) noted, it’s what e-mail might look like if it had been invented today instead of 25 years ago.
Google Wave will work inside your web browser. It borrows from familiar concepts behind e-mail and instant messaging–two technologies developed in the 1960s to mimick snail mail and the telephone, respectively–to create a dynamic communication space that combines synchronous and asynchronous communication into ongoing discussions, real-time search and analysis, and web publishing. In addition, Google is making Wave open source, giving other developers the opportunity to build upon it, and the opportunity to have “federated” Wave servers capable of talking to one another, just like e-mail servers do today (and totally unlike existing services like Facebook or Twitter).
As Tim O’Reilly notes, Wave is to e-mail as Windows/Mac is to DOS. Just as digging into your computer’s command line is seen as archaic to most, will we one day look back at e-mail and wonder how we got along with it as the core to our online communication? What do you think?
(via TechCrunch, O’Reilly Radar)
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