Google Wave to get wider preview audience

Google said on Tuesday that select Google Apps customers — notably some schools and businesses — will get preview access to Google Wave in the autumn. Google Wave is a service that aims to reinvent email, IM and group conversations into a seamless application.

In a blog post, Google said Google Wave will be previewed in the autumn. The search giant aims to bring Google Wave to all Google Apps users in 2010. Google unveiled Google Wave in May at its I/O developer conference.

Google Wave could be a critical addition to Google Apps and if it lives up to its advance billing.

Google acknowledged that "the product, platform and protocols are still being developed," but hopes that extending access to more users can lead to more tweaks.

It's unclear what impact Google Wave will have on enterprise demand for Google Apps. Dion Hinchliffe wrote in a must-read recent analysis:

"Wave's relevance to the enterprise might seem premature with so many of the early and current Web 2.0 applications (blogs, wikis, social networks, Twitter-style social messaging, mashups, etc.) still — often arduously — making their way into the workplace years after their inception. Although we seem to finally be hitting a tipping point with 2.0 tools at work, Wave itself seems credible enough to get on our watchlists, at least to understand the implications."

Here's Hinchcliffe’s model of how Wave fits into the enterprise: