Google Wave is an online software application product from Google, which Google described as "a new web application for real-time communication and collaboration" It was first announced at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web-based service (web application), computing platform, and communications protocol (protocol (computing)) designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative (Collaborative software) and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, spelling/grammar checking (spellchecker), automated translation among 40 languages, and numerous other extensions. Initially released only to developers, a preview release of Google Wave was extended to 100,000 users in September 2009, each allowed to invite additional users. Google accepted most requests submitted starting the 29th of November 2009, soon after the September extended release of the technical preview. On May 19, 2010, Google Wave was released to the general public. There will be six sessions about Wave at Google I/O 2010.