Google Wave Open to the World

I’ve long felt that Google Wave was never going to really get moving until Google opened it from behind its closed beta.

Now, at Google I/O, Wave has been launched into public availability for everyone to use.

..Or get confused by.

In fact, according to PCMAG, “Google executives offered a mea culpa of sorts for Google Wave on Wednesday, noting that the company did a poor job of explaining Wave’s purpose. Going forward, the evolution of Wave will probably look a lot like Gmail, they said.”

Either way, the announcement that Wave is now publicly available to anyone who would like an account, and that it’s joining Google Apps is a positive sign, leading (I think) to greater integration between either Google products or 3rd party collaboration tools.

If you want a Wave account, simply visit wave.google.com in your browser and register.

Google’s blog post notes some updates for those who may have tried Wave in the past and haven’t been back in a while:

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. 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. For example, you can now get email notifications when waves change, easily navigate to unread parts of a wave, and remove participants added by mistake. We have also added permission management options and an extensions gallery.

A video about Wave: