Google Wave opens up tomorrow, but maybe not for you

September 29, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

google-wave-logoGoogle is letting a few more people play with its new communication and collaboration tool, Wave, starting tomorrow. Specifically, 100,000 developers, Google Apps users, and other sign-ups at the Wave website will be getting access to a preview version.

That’s a lot of people, but many more are being left out — Engineering Manager Lars Rasmussen tells CNET Google received more than 1 million requests to participate. That’s confirmation that, despite the occasional fuzziness of the Wave concept (because it’s a combination of so many different concepts, such as email, word processing, news feeds, and photo galleries), there’s tons of interest in the product.

Here’s the state of Wave, according to Google:

Some of you have asked what we mean by preview. This just means that Google Wave isn’t quite ready for prime time. Not yet, anyway. Since first unveiling the project back in May, we’ve focused almost exclusively on scalability, stability, speed and usability. Yet, you will still experience the occasional downtime, a crash every now and then, part of the system being a bit sluggish and some of the user interface being, well, quirky.

There are also still key features of Google Wave that we have yet to fully implement. For example, you can’t yet remove a participant from a wave or define groups of users, draft mode is still missing and you can’t configure the permissions of users on a wave. We’ll be rolling out these and other features as soon as they are ready — over the next few months.

As part of opening up, Google has also highlighted some of the cool extensions companies have built on top of Wave, even in its early stage, which give some sense of how broadly Wave might be used:

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Mike
    Here is a look at 6rounds demo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoVTu0Do8u0
  • Goggle Wave is the definition of a disruptive technology. When it takes off it has the potential to redefine the web and how we interact digitally. Hope to get my access soon!
  • klimentino
    It is good
  • Mike
    Can anyone confirm that the invites have been sent out? Wonder if they are rolling them out over a period today or they all went at once. Just kinda surprised I have seen anything hit my inbox (and somewhat disappointed too).
  • Funny, this is my first time hearing about this, so I don't think I will be getting an invitation.

    I am still a little weird about using social networking sites and this seems to be a giant, inflated social networking site.