Date: May 28th ’09, Time: 8:15 AM, Place: San Diego, California This was the moment when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, took centre stage to launch a product, they believed would challenge the very forte Google operated in. The name was BING (reportedly it stands for Bing Is Not Google). A little problem to the big executive launch though – bing.com site wasnt LIVE! It took a while for the news to spread, but when it did, MS was in an embarassing mess of a lifetime. Why? The news about a team of Sydney based Google Engineers giving a developer’s DEMO at the Google IO Conference in San Fransisco, California about something exciting came in. Eyes swayed right angles from San Diego to San Fransisco. A Wave swept MS right off its feet, that too on its D-Day. Google had come up with one of the most exciting and promising products in a long span of tech history – Google Wave.
Before MS could soak in what had just hit them, people were already talking: the name is Wave – Google Wave. At the end of the 80 mins DEMO, 4000 developers stood up and cheered like anything. The applause was compared to the legendary Keynote Address from Jobs himself! Google had so very meticulously planned the Day 2 of its IO – planned to the very exact minutes. And when you declare in a developer’s forum that the product is going to be Open Source, the applause gets manifold. Wave is developed by a Sydney based Google team of Lars and Jens Ramussen (brothers of the startup Where 2 Tech fame, that later became Google Maps) – Lead Developers and Stefannie Hannon, Lead PM. At the IO, it was mostly Lars and Stefannie who went through the most of Google Wave. Lars and Stafannie explained Wave in terms of 3 Ps – the Product, the Platform and the Protocol. Wave the Product Google Wave is supposedly a game changer in the current context of online communication, so much so that the very existence of email as a service is under threat. Wave is a real time Communication platform that combines the email, IM, web chat, social networking and project management. The concurrency in IM/chats is such that you see things appearing character by character! People can join wave midway and still see what the original thread was, thanx to a cool feature like ‘Playback’. Google Wave made simple (watch video)Wave as a product can be embedded in games/blogs/social networks (one can only imagine the impact it will have on the Social Media as a whole). For example a wave embedded in Twitter is a Twave. Every facet of Wave - the product is sure to mesmerise you. 
Wave the Platform – Wave Extensions This is the aspect that the developers were waiting for at the Google IO. And Wave did not disappoint. Google Wave is packaged with a host of APIs like Spelly, Linky, Searchy, Tweety. And the rest are open for the developers to build. This is the aspect of the Wave that is critical to its success. If Wave goes a HIT, it becomes your Twiter/Facebok/gaming client all in one, subsequently opening up the possibility of a whole new application boom in future. 
Wave the Protocol Google Wave Federation Protocol is an extension to XMPP – the internet messaging protocol, that has taken the real-time communication to a whole new level. Google Wave as a product is Open Source. Google believes making Wave open like email will only further its cause. Anyone can have their own wave client and still communicate real time to any other Wave network. 
With a product as ambitious and breathtaking as Wave, either its a total HIT or a bomber. There is no middle path here. Consider when all your friends switch to wave, you simply dont have an option not to. Google has got its first steps right. Now the World awaits its developer’s launch on September 30th. If Wave turns into what it claimed to be at the DEMO, the world is going to change, and change for good. We shall keep you updated with the latest on Wave. And if things go right, we shall give a developer’s perspective to Wave in due time.
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