Google Wave Rumoured To Launch In 2010
The much-hyped Google Wave collaboration tool could be out of beta and formally launched – with an app store – by the end of 2010
Google Wave could finally have its public launch next year, along with an application marketplace where third party developers can sell plug-ins for the forthcoming Google tool.
Google senior staff engineer and Wave co-developer Lars Rasmussen told Tech Radar that the real-time communication and collaboration tool will be available by the end of 2010, and that “several hundred thousand” people are currently using the preview version.
“So many people really want in,” said Rasmussen. “It’s nice to have more requests than we can handle, but we would really like to give it to anyone… as soon as scalability is in place we’ll open it up, as long as we carefully manage people’s expectations.”
When questioned about the possibility of an app store, Rasmussen said “Developers have asked us a lot for a market place where we’ll help them sell their extensions to our users including a revenue share so we’ll also make some money from it. I’ll be very surprised if we don’t go down that route.”
The Google Wave collaboration tool is still a subject of mystery to many people, but has attracted great excitement since its beta launch in May. Google’s aim is to create a remote virtual work environment by combining elements of email, instant messaging, social networking and workplace collaboration software into a single web application.
In September Google rolled out the service to 100,000 consumer and business users for testing. At the time Google received more than one million requests to participate in the preview.
A recent study by research firm Gartner found that distinctions between the components of unified communications and collaboration (UCC) – such as voice, messaging, conferencing, instant messaging, applications, clients, social networks and collaboration tools – will no longer exist by 2013.
“Combining communications with collaboration makes both sets of services easier to access and adds richer ways for teams to work together. We’ll also see organisations combine the groups responsible for voice and collaborations to better support UCC,” said Gartner research vice president Jeff Mann.
