Whenever the big kid on the block makes a new announcement, it’s a popular pastime to beat up on him. People have had a lot of fun beating up on Microsoft for years and now that Google have matured and become one of the biggest fish in the sea, they are a target too. I’m not worried about everything becoming Googlified, though, and moreover when they come out with interesting new open-source technologies like Google Wave, I get pretty excited. There’s been a wave of hype since they gave their preview at Google I/O 2009, and with good reason. This communication format promises to be as grounbreaking as email and will enable new kinds of social interaction, facilitated by real-time updating, sharing, editing and even…wait for it…Natural Language Processing. Imagine real-time chat translation in dozens of different languages. I always take any NLP announcements with a grain of salt, and to be sure this technology will have its teething pains. However, the demo is extremely exciting. (I’ve signed up to the developer’s list for updates.)

At the very least, if this technology catches on it will truly change the kinds of online social interactions that are possible and will make significant challenges to both current social networking stalwarts (Facebook, etc.) and the old standby desktop applications. I can see particular benefits for collaborative document editing, technology enhanced education, an dare I say it: Physical computing.

Since Wave uses an open protocol standard, anyone can develop for it. I’m envisioning online collaborative conversations actuating physical devices and real world sensors updating Waves. The possibilities are exciting!

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