Google Wave is a technology that is intended to create dynamically persistent conversations that can be embedded within web pages and similar web-enabled devices that work with the API. The core idea behind Wave drew its initial inspiration from mail conversations in GMail - at any given point in the give and take response of an email conversation you may have multiple participants, each of whom may be able to see some or perhaps all of the conversation (depending upon such factors as BCCs), and each of whom can also respond to the conversation at any point (creating a tree of different conversation threads.

Google Wave differs from email in that the Wave container is itself a feed resource that can be embedded within in an application using a combination of HTML and Javascript. Because it is essentially embeddable within a web page (rather than require being hosted as a discrete web application or even a stand-alone application) this means that Wave conversations can emulate chat rooms, blogs with commentary responses, mailing lists, and no doubt even Twitter-like community feeds. That in and of itself is likely to have a significant affect upon these types of applications, though likely not for a few years yet.

Google has had both some notable hits and some significant misses over the years, but at least in this commentator's opinion, if they can solve the technical issues involved in making it work, Google Wave will most likely have a huge impact upon how we communicate. It represents a further shift away from the notion the social media is tied into applications or proprietary environments. Because the Google wave: protocol is an open standard (I believe with the IETF, which typically registers protocols), anyone can both develop and establish wave containers - even potential competitors such as Microsoft, Apple, or Adobe.

Similarly, since ultimately the only way for such interoperability to work is for an open authentication protocol to be used, it is very likely that this will further enhance the notion of distributed open identity, where you can access your own wave account from any wave client, regardless of both who hosts the page the client is in or who hosts the account.

Given the progress being made on the Wave Lists (where I follow if not regularly participate) I'd say that the likelihood that Google can pull it off is high, and once they have solved the thornier issues, its also likely that both commercial and private vendors, government entities and NGOs will follow suit. Since the communication protocol involves the use of XML messaging, it also raises the very real possibility that not all waves will be "rich text" but will in fact be able to carry XML payloads of any sort, this also suggests that not all waves need provide human messages ... they could carry data and instruction as well. Of course, the down side to this is that such data and instruction could also very well be malicious, which adds spam and hacking to the potential drawbacks of the technology that will need to be resolved before Google Wave goes live.

So while it may not reinvent communication, it could very well at least have the effect of significantly enhancing it. It will only fall flat if it fails to get out the gate, and even if it doesn't the likelihood that other competitors can see what they're trying to do will inspire alternative approaches.