Google Wave splashes on 100,000 beta-testers

Google Wave, the search engine’s upcoming “personal communication and collaboration” tool, is inviting 100,000 users to join its beta.

And those users will be able to invite five further buddies to give the service a try.

Wave is essentially a mix of email, instant messaging and document sharing, allowing multiple users to communicate, edit text, share photos, videos, links and so forth.

When users are typing, the text will literally appear in real-time, so people will be able to respond to anticipated questions before they’re asked. In theory, anyway; although that sounds annoyingly similar to being interrupted in a vocal conversation.

Google has described Wave as “what e-mail would look like if it were invented today”.

For more information check out http://wave.google.com, where there’s a lengthy developer preview video of the service.