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
Google is referring the Xerox PARC paper in their document (not presenting it as “my own invention”), and is developing their own protocol based in previous known OT concepts and ideas developed on PARC paper. IMHO Google is not reinventing the wheel nor plagiarize anything, but implementing these ideas for general use, and this is the innovation from Google. This is the innovative part ;-)
Best