In this post i discuss the new Google product Wave and share some ideas for how i think Google Wave will change the internet as we know it.

Google is clearly the king of the internet and i think it is safe to say that no matter where you go online you cannot hide from the empire of Google. They have their fingers so many pies like statistics, blogs, advertising, publishing and then they have a full hand in the search pie.

As Google have grown by sticking their fingers in more and more pies they are trying new things and most notably lately is their move into the conversation tool, called Google Wave.

It is hard to explain what Google Wave is simply because it is so many different things, i would say it is like a combination of e-mail, IM and a wiki but can do even more than that. If you want to really get an understanding of Google Wave then i suggest finding a spare couple of hours in your life and look into it on the YouTube Video below from Google I/O Keynote explaining all the features.

Wave shouldn't affect you yet as it is still very new and still in early beta and is simply aimed at Developers now so they can integrate Google Wave into their products. Below are some of my ideas for products that could be built on Google Wave or integrate Google Wave.

Forum Software

Google Wave is built around the idea of conversation and no software is more conversation dependent than forum software and this is the kind of software i see being powered by Google Wave more and more over the next couple of years.

What We Have Now

At this moment in time forum software is straight forward in design, every user replies to a topic and replies are shown in sequence with the oldest showing first. Users then have to visit the forum to reply to see any new topics and then reply from the forum software.

So imagine you visit 20-30 forums and contribute to each forum just as much as the last, you may end up spending hours of your day hopping between forums looking for replies and then replying, this takes time, lots and lots of time. This time is wasted if the forum has no replies.

With Google Wave

Google Wave is dedicated to conversation and speeding up conversation as well as the quality of conversation on the internet as we know it. With Google Wave a forum could be built on the Google Wave backbone and all conversation would travel through the Google Wave servers.

So you visit 20-30 forums a day, you post a new thread on the "I Eat Chicken Forum" - typically you would have to visit this forum to see any new replies, or rely on e-mails to alert you of new replies. With Google Wave you would have one area, think of this as the portal to all of your online conversation, from here you would see all of your conversation and all replies right from within Google Wave.

So lets say John Smith replies to your post on the forum, straight away the reply would appear in your Google Wave account which is structured like an e-mail, you could then reply to John's reply straight from Google Wave so you wouldn't need to visit the forum to reply.

Another amazing feature of Google Wave is it ability to have "Inline Replies" which are replies that you can make to a specific part of a topic or conversation, so on a forum you would need to reply to the person above, in Google Wave you could reply to a specific area of the topic and the reply would appear here.

The Video

Below is a video showing how replying to a wave is done, it also shows how replying to a specific part of a Wave is done.

How Is This Better

This is better because it brings all conversations together in one place, you don't have to troll around all the forums and websites you visit just to find replies to your conversations, all of the conversations are stored in Google Wave and can be accessed from the Google Wave client.

Blogging

Another outlet for conversation is Blogging, people use blogs to express their opinions to the world and people typically leave replies and let their opinions known too. The key point is commenting and this is something that Google Wave does so very well.

What We Have Now

At present Blogs are driven in a simple format, the blog owner makes a post about something they have done or something that is on their mind, then if people want to they can reply to that blog post. Comments are then shown in sequence typically with the oldest first and people can either reply to the main topic (Blog Post) or a specific person.

Once the comment is submitted it appears on the website and people need to refresh or revisit to see comments.

With Google Wave

If a blogging platform was developed on Google Wave then commenting would be much different because commenting could be made live and commenting could be made on a specific area of the original topic.

Google Wave has the ability for people to reply inline, so imagine that you are reading a blog post and you see a paragraph that you mind quite interesting and want to leave a reply, you could reply to just that point instead of the entire topic.

Google Wave also has the ability for live commenting, so as you are on the blog you could see people commenting on specific parts of the blog in real time, this would add a real sense of real-time-communication to the your blogging experience.

With Google Wave it is possible to do some easy collaboration, so imagine you run a large blog with many authors, with Google Wave it would be possible for other authors to edit, fact check and correct your blog posts before they go live and this can all be done live, not only that but every author could easily edit your blog post in real time and see the edits in realtime.

How Is This Better

At the moment the blogging platforms are quite static in comparison to Google Wave's conversation method, with Google Wave you could break down that wave and have people commenting on your blog posts in realtime would open up realtime conversation to your blog posts.

Wiki

If you look at Wikipedia and how the editing and submission of information is processed you could see millions of way to improve this, Google Wave isn't going to fix all of them but if Wikipedia was to move towards Google Wave it would certainly make the editing and submission process smoother.

What We Have Now

Currently a wiki platform lets you edit posts, these edits are done in a straight forward plain text editor and submitted to the database. If two people are making edits at the same time then the wiki software tells you that a clash in editing has occurred and you need to make a decision about how to merge the two edits, this becomes more complicated with more than two people editing.

With Google Wave

Google Wave has a brilliant feature that allows several users to edit a "Wave" at the same time, this makes collaborating between groups of people easier because you can work on editing a "Wave" together and see each other's edits in real time.

So in a wiki environment there could be 6 people editing together, as each user editing the wiki post the other edits would appear in real-time and you could even edit the edits in real time and everyone viewing or editing the wiki post could see the edits being made in real time.

The Video

This idea mainly relies on the editing feature and collaborative editing of "Waves" - i have included this video because it gives a good visual representation of the editing feature.

How Is This Better

As people are editing wiki submissions they can see all other edits as they happen in realtime and also edit other people's edits in real time meaning that before an update is even submitted the edits can be fact checked and removed if necessary.

This Is Only The Start

Google Wave is only the start of this communication revolution that Google is slowly putting into play, in the not too distant future i see social networks, wikis, forums, e-mail and IM all to use Google Wave.

IM took off and took away a lot of e-mail usage because it was quicker, with Google Wave we may see IM loosing its edge as Wave allows even media rich communication instantly.

API

If you are nice enough to get an invite to Google Wave's early preview then you have access to the massive APIs that Google are offering which means you could already start building Google Wave into your applications.

Great For Web Designers

Google Wave is HTML 5 based, this means it will not work in IE, which is a positive step in the right direction for web designers as IE users will need to download Firefox, Chrome or Safari to use Google Wave. If Google Wave takes off massively with YouTube and Facebook then we may see more and more users looking at HTML 5 browsers meaning less and less Internet Explorer usage which is great for web designers.

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