Departing from the sleek minimalism that defines its search engine and web browser, Google has previewed a new, kitchen-sink communications tool called Wave. It’s designed by Australians.

Created by the same Sydney-based team that was behind Google Maps - a very tidy and useful app, in NBR’s view - Google Wave is an onscreen riot (see screen shot below, or the large version here).

Apparently the idea is that while email and instant messaging follow analogue archetypes (snail mail and phone calls, respectively) the internet provides the opportunity to do so much more.

And all at once, apparently.

Google's latest app, Wave, combines file sharing, Twitter-like and Facebook-style featues with real-time collaboration and, well, I'll pass over to the Google house blog:

“Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”

Right.