I haven't seen many guesses about where the name... - Matt Cutts

Sound waves? - Louis Gray

Waves on the beach of Australia? - Louis Gray

WAVE = Will Anyone Value Email? - Louis Gray

It came from a name that isn't yet trademarked by someone else for a similar web type of service - Charbax

the team is from Australia right - don't all Aussies drink beer and surf? :) - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Are Jens and Lars danish guys? As with the V8 engine, I guess some Danes are good programmers.. - Charbax

ooh, ouch, Charbax. I was thinking something along the lines of "it's a particle ... it's a wave" - Laura Norvig

"'Wave' goodbye to the Internet as you know it?" - Martin Bryant

Yes, yes we do - Glenn Slaven

Hang on, sending a message in Firefly was called sending a wave! - Glenn Slaven

I think it effectively evokes the concept of rich flows of information. - Daniel Shaw

No idea what inspired it, but here's my interpretation - communication is like a Mexican wave - one person starts, others join in, and the wave moves from person to person and back again. - Elpie

Glenn, good one: http://sendingawave.wordpress.com - Daniel Shaw

Yeah, that's a good podcast if you're a Browncoat - Glenn Slaven

What would be nice is if it could automatically highlight the good stuff and make big waves of the stuff that deserves to be spread around, not having to necessarily build huge blog/twitter followers over months and years of melding into that type of web communities to have a voice and to be heard - Charbax

Because Google Spouts was taken? - Brent - Long Live Rock

Wave goodbye to email? - Julian

Hokusai's Wave - Michael Stearns

Dude! Australia right/ So, like "Catch the Google Wave" dude! - Alan Bleiweiss

@Julian, and Wave goodbye to Blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook and Twitter as well.. - Charbax

That's some interesting suggestions very quickly. :) - Matt Cutts

Yeah, but are any of them right? - Glenn Slaven

Because the waves are above the (fail) whales? - Andy Murdoch

Glenn, the Wave folks would be the final word, so you'd have to ask them for confirmation. But it seems like a fair question to ask the team. - Matt Cutts

WAVE =? Wiki Api Visualization Extensions - imabonehead

Charbax, I'm watching the demo video from http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009... - Matt Cutts

Thoreau on 'the real-time web' : “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” - jacek slominski

from the sea? - Designs and Development

From the novel "The Wave" about the rise of nazi-like movement. - Allan Sørensen

Just be thankful it's not Microsoft's Squirt... - Johnny Worthington

I'm assuming its because it includes all forms of web communication. "Classical" communication has been attributed to EM waves... probably a weak guess, but what the hell, I guessed. - Len Estrada

Natural especially with the stream being a popular term, I want them to rename bugs to sharks :) - Joe Dawson

Rocking the boat makes waves. - Louis Gray

@Johnny Worthington: That's even funnier if I imagine you saying it with your Aussie twang. - Martin Bryant

It comes from the fact that waves start off as nothing and grow and grow until they become strong and mighty which is what a wave in Google becomes ;) - Nicholas James

The messages that bounce between participants in the conversation can be seen as a wave bouncing between walls. When this conversation involves more people, there's more interaction and more synergy, the wave may turn into a tsunami (hm... of enjoyment and creativity), which I guess is what Google Wave team hopes to facilitate. - Nenad Nikolic

It was intended to create a ripple effect throughout the industry and hence the name wave. Or it might suggest that it was supposed to wash away BING! - Saurav Verma

I agree with Glenn :-). If its not a salute to Firefly, it should be! - grgisme

An old Alan Watts quote ? ;) - Anthony Citrano from BuddyFeed

Are media objects Waves or Particles? - David Bausola

Because "Google Tsunami" would get the notice of antitrust regulators..? - Sprague D

because googlefeed and gwitter sounded too much like their competitors - Jamie Vidamour

Named after a Patti Smith album?? - Ian

GROOVE was already taken? - Gary Burge

I don't know where the name came from, but I think the name fits it perfectly. - Ocean

Well you can't go surfing until you've got a good wave - Aussie beaches got those. -[ - Chris Loft

I would bet it's a particle physics implicate order type reference. - Todd Hoff

Well it's already come crashing down on Microsoft's Bing announcement. Fitting. - Michelle Tripp

I guess because calling it "The Dog's B*ll*cks" didn't sit well with the Marketing guys..? :-) - Andrew Terry

"Hey! Why don't we give our product a NAME this time? Instead of like Calendar, GMail, and MAPS", "I dunno...", "It worked well for Chrome", "Sure I guess." - teh Dork Knight

Google tells me "We liked how the word is associated with communication in so many ways -- from hand waves, to sound or electromagnetic waves. Waves also symbolized Australia for us. And, of course, who could resist the endless supply of puns?" - Philipp Lenssen

Ocean of information, many waves. People can make their own waves. Surfing the Internet. - Cristo

Alrighty then--glad you asked, Philipp. Glenn Slaven, I was watching the video of the demo and I noticed that Stephanie Hannon did a poll of people's favorite movies and she included Serenity in the list, along with Star Trek and Star Wars. I thought including Serenity was pretty cool. - Matt Cutts

Mexican wave??? - Roberto Bonini

only when you're not looking, Mark. ;) - Anthony Citrano

Surfing the web ... riding the wave? - Sajid Umerji

Say hi to your friends by Waving, they wave in planes, you ride a wave to bring you into shore, business is in waves, sound travels in waves umm sounds like they are wishing WAVE's of people upon their service - JuneM

Communication - Collaboration Duality - LogEx

A few guesses: 1) They really like going to the beach. 2) Waving is a gesture, 3) A wave is also representative of a stream - of data, of sound, of whatever. - David Sifry

Firefly, it is. http://whedonesque.com/comment... - Jérôme Flipo