Imagine a place where chat, email, document sharing and social networking could all co-exist peacefully, with all communication occuring in real-time. That’s Google Wave. The idea came about in 2004 when Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the creators of Google Maps, were pondering their next project. It seemed obvious to focus their creative energies on something that is consistently evolving: communication.

Google Wave, introduced last last month at Google I/O, combines multiple communication and collaboration platforms in one shared space. Rather than using separate applications to chat, edit documents, share photos, and send emails, Wave offers a smooth continuum of all four and more. What begins as a conversation can become a shared document that others can edit. A photo album of your vacation can become a discussion with friends about your trip. The drag-and-drop function will make photo-sharing especially simple. And because it updates in real-time, letter for letter, Wave mimics a face-to-face conversation. It won’t be necessary to wait for others to hit ’send’ to see what they’re going to say. Of course, privacy settings allow users to choose who can access and comment on their ‘waves’.

Although it is unclear whether Google Wave would ever replace Gmail and Google Docs in the corporate environment, it certainly blurs the lines between the email, chat, and document sharing capabilities of Google Apps. With blog and twitter clients; embedded video, maps, and gadgets; link-recognition; interactive games; and open APIs for developers to build and use new extensions, Google Wave may just be the wave of the future.

View the Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009:

No date has been set for the launch, but we can expect to see Google Wave in the coming months. Learn more and sign up for updates by visiting http://wave.google.com/