ReadWriteWeb

When Google Wave made its public debut last week, it created quite a stir, but without being able to get a hands-on look at the product, it was quite hard to really grasp the implications of what Google was trying to do. Today, we got access to Wave, and after testing it for a while, we can confidently say that Google is indeed on to something. The developer sandbox version we have access to is still a bit rough around the edges, and quite a few functions are still unavailable.

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we report on Google's announcement of a new communications and collaboration platform called Google Wave, look at Microsoft's latest challenger in the search market with Bing, analyze the current trends we're seeing on the Web, look at the latest smartphone statistics, and more. We also update you with the latest from our new channel ReadWriteStart, dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

Google today announced a new Internet-based communications and collaboration platform; Google Wave. While some of the details are still a bit sketchy, Google Wave looks to be an integrated communications platform that brings together email, chat, photo-sharing, and collaborative editing features. Google describes a 'wave' as "equal parts conversation and document" and the Wave team basically sees it as a replacement for email and other collaboration tools.