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Google hopes people will now want to catch its Wave

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Google is opening up Wave to everyone, the company said at its developers conference in San Francisco Wednesday.

It introduced Wave last year at Google I/O as a new tool for communicating and collaborating over the Web to a wave of over-the-top hype that soon came crashing down because the product was slow and buggy.

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But Google says it has worked out the kinks and it’s inviting everyone to try it here.

Wave is an application that runs in a Web browser. It creates a shared online desktop where two or more people can easily interact, whether exchanging messages, sharing and editing documents or playing games.

It’s part of Google’s push to convince developers that Internet browsers are a powerful platform for building even complex applications. It used to be that was the domain of the desktop, Microsoft’s playing field.

Google began testing Wave with consumers and a handful of customers six months ago. Google says businesses have used it to collaborate on projects such as writing software code and creating advertising campaigns. University students and professors have used it to translate Latin poems and write research papers. The Seattle Times experimented with it while working on Pulitzer Prize-winning news coverage. Google said it is using Wave at Google I/O.

-- Jessica Guynn

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