Federated and Open Source: How Wave is Not Proprietary to Google

No one owns email. Therefore, the idea of moving your messages to Google Wave might feel like you’re giving the search giant a monopoly on your communication. Email is a protocol that’s unaffiliated with any particular company or organization. But even though it’s continually referred to as “Google Wave” instead of just “Wave,” Wave is not proprietary to Google. Like email, Wave consists of several parts: a protocol, a server, and a client. The protocol itself is an open standard, created by but not beholden to Google, and free to all software developers to make products that utilize it.

Therefore, if Wave usage catches on, more Wave server and client software from many different companies and organizations may become available in the future—like web browsers and email programs did. The Wave protocol is federated and does not centralize all information on Google’s servers; like email, users on different Wave servers hosted at different companies will be able to communicate with each other using Wave, independent of Google.

In Wave’s preview release, it is not yet possible to send waves between different servers. However, the server federation is a core part of the product’s foundation and will definitely come to fruition.