Oh dear. Another hyped protocol/platform from Google… oh wait. It’s not from Google. It’ all started in Xerox PARC…
There are several papers that describe what Google now claims to have developed…
left: Xerox PARC Paper; right: Google Wave
Conclusion: Go and read old Papers. As it turns out almost all newly hyped things have been described in papers from years ago.
Source 1: http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform
Source 2: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/215585.215706