Google Wave is a new communication and collaboration tool that combines features of messaging, document editing, and web development platforms. It allows users to communicate in real-time through shared documents called "waves" that can include rich text, media, and gadgets. Waves also have an open API for developers to build extensions. Google Wave aims to bridge different communication methods into a single model and take advantage of modern computing abilities rather than imitating non-digital forms. An early prototype was developed by a small team at Google's Sydney office in 2004 and the product has expanded over two years of development.