I was surprised to learn that there is no standardized client-server protocol, but it makes sense if they are building a browser based client. Any sensible pro

I was surprised to learn that there is no standardized client-server protocol, but it makes sense if they are building a browser based client. Any sensible protocol would likely be outside of current browser capabilities and the scheme they are using (based on GWT) is unsuitable for standardization. I wouldn't expect them to spend resources developing a protocol they aren't going to use and they would likely do a bad job of it anyway, for that same reason. The protocol should be designed by whoever makes the first local client (which BTW I would be overjoyed to do, if someone wants to keep me afloat while I do it). They are taking federation pretty seriously. They've opened a reference implementation and some third party developers are already running their own servers. When someone writes a client, or a web interface for a server, we can use Wave completely independent of Google. I don't see how lock-in would happen in the long run. In the worst case, it shouldn't be hard to RE their GWT marshalling and hack a new front end on to their server.