How will you use Google Wave? Recruiting, decision-making, dealing with complaints

It may have only been launched a few months ago but Google's Wave collaboration platform is already attracting attention from businesses, according to one of the key architects of the service.

Lars Rasmussen, Google's software engineering manager and co-creator of Wave, said unlike typical Google services, Wave has stoked early interest among both consumers and enterprises.

"Google is a company whose products usually start by capturing the imagination of consumers and then business gets interested but we have already had an enormous amount of interest [from companies]," Rasmussen told the SAP TechEd conference in Vienna yesterday.

The service, announced earlier this year, allows multiple users to chat and work together in real-time within a window Google is calling a 'wave'. In the window, people can exchange real-time IM, photos, videos, maps and documents.

Rasmussen predicted businesses will use Wave to collaborate on writing documents, decision-making and co-ordinating department workflows.

"If you have five people working together on a blog post you are amazed how quickly it can be done," he said of Google's own experience with using Wave.

Wave's real-time collaboration between business could reach a point where delicate matters such as contract negotiations could be settled using the platform, Rasmussen predicted.

Google Wave is already getting interest from businesses
(Screenshot: Rafe Needleman/CNET)

However, according to Rasmussen, it's Wave's ability to handle custom apps that opens up the most interesting possibilities for businesses.

"There are a million tools that I use at Google that I would like to see integrated with Wave," he told the conference.

"Our recruitment process system, expenses system or complaints tracking system, I would love for somebody to write an application to make these collaborative.

"It could really speed up that work and that's where the real value lies for the enterprise."

Rasmussen envisages that…

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