Google Wave is finally open to the public as a Google Labs project and to Google Apps users, subject to administrator approval.
Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson talks about how traffic is growing at a faster rate than the amount of users and how the model will not scale. He notes the need for new business models and an increase in innovation. Wave is at once a product, a platform, and a protocol. It combines the functions of e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and blogs in a framework that facilitates both real-time and stored collaborative messaging.
Google used its annual I/O developer conference to publicize the invite only system has now been dropped for the struggling platform with both the public and Google Apps business users now able to sign up at wave.google.com.
“If you tried Google Wave out a while ago, and found it not quite ready for real use, now is a good time to come back for a second try,” said Wave developer Stephanie Hannon. “Wave is much faster and much more stable than when we began the preview, and we have worked hard to make Wave easier to use.”
Besides, Google has also announced the ‘Chrome OS Web Store’ which allows users to install web-based apps which run using the likes of Flash and HTML5. Google Font Directory, designed to standardise font APIs across the Web and WebM, an open video format for streaming media which has attained support form Mozilla, Opera and “more than forty other publishers” also comes as a new add-on from Google.
Tags: administrator approval, apis, google, google wave, os web, streaming media, web store, wikis