Google Wave is a new tool for “communication and collaboration on the web,” which utilizes cloud computing. Wave is open protocol, meaning that developers can mold it to fit their own concepts. Here’s the official video from Google:

Lars and Jens Rasmussen of Google, the developers of Google Maps, were the ones to develop Wave. They aimed at creating email for the first time, like it was invented now rather than years ago.

With this in mind, Google Wave addresses needs of the common day user such as the ability to type and read conversations real time. This is different from instant message because in Google Wave, you can see your friend actually typing each character without having to hit an enter button. These conversations are called “waves.” Also, more than two users can enter into the conversation.

The features are endless such as the ability to drag and drop pictures into the threads, and to play back the conversations in the order they were created. You’ll have to check out the video to get the full understanding of who all this works… they do a good job of showing examples of each feature.

One really cool aspect of wave is its attempt to fuse together user generated content with a new form of email, which is delivery tool. Because Waves can be public, conversations could act as RSS feeds, newsletters, Wikis, or even blogs.

Wave is a web based application just like Gmail, and in fact, it looks very similar to the Gmail interface we’re all used to seeing.

Google Wave Interface

Most importantly, Wave is open protocol, which means Google is looking for outside developers to enhance the product. I’m very interested to see what the future holds for Wave and if developers will collaborate to build a product that replaces email, wikis, blogs, rss, and social networks.