Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web.

Ed: Despite the excitement:

• What is Wave? The flash features aside, Wave tries to replace SMTP and POP, with a new infrastructure. No chance.
• Wave is realtime structure for storing documents and edits in pieces, allowing many to edit and view at the same time; and playback of the edits. How often do we need realtime edit? Not often. How complex is this hack? Very.
• Will it scale to hundreds of participants? Problably not. Thus, it does not address the Facebook model of friends, or Twitter's new publishing model - Apples to Oranges.
• Even with a slick interface full of cheap thrills, will enterprises that are using Lotus or Sharepoint rip out their infrastructure and training to use Wave? Too expensive.
• Will enterprises that are not using collaboration suddenly feel the impulse to try? Not likely.
• Will small technology businesses adopt quickly? Absolutely.

In summary, Wave has its place, but won't be the big wave that they or the public hopes to see. If they execute poorly, it'll be a wave that disappears pretty quickly. Just an opinion.

by MG Siegler on May 28, 2009

Yesterday, during the Google I/O keynote, Google’s VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, laid out a grand vision for the direction Google sees the web heading towards with the move to the HTML 5 standard. While we’re not there yet, all the major browser players besides Microsoft are aligned and ready for the next phase, which will include such things as the ability to run 3D games and movies in the browser without additional plug-ins. But Google wants to take it one step further with a brand new method of communication for this new era. It’s called Google Wave.

Everyone uses email and instant messaging on the web now, but imagine if you could tie those two forms of communication together and add a load of functionality on top of it. At its most fundamental form, that’s essentially what Wave is. Developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussenand Stephanie Hannon out of Google’s Sydney, Australia offices, Wave was born out of the idea that email and instant messaging, as successful as they still are, were both created a very long time ago. We now have a much more robust web full of content and brimming with a desire to share stuff. Or as Lars Rasumussen put it, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”