There’s been a lot of hype lately about Google Wave. If you’ve heard anything from Google, you’ve heard that it’s supposed to replace E-mail as the next form of communication. A number of prominent bloggers however, including Robert Scoble, have done their reviews, and felt that it is overhyped.
This post will not be another review. If you’ve read other reviews, I’m sure you’re aware of the complaints with the noisy nature of the service, and the general usage of it. Rather, I’d like to discuss how Google Wave impacts communications, and whether or not it truly is the replacement for E-mail.
Google Wave is designed to be a collaborative platform. I believe this is one of the reasons it is so hard for many people to grasp. E-mail was designed to be a means of relaying information from one source to others. Google Wave on the other hand, is designed to enable multiple sources to collaboratively produce information. This is why so many people get frustrated with the lack of communication from Google Wave. They are viewing it as a potential source of information, and not being notified of new information. This is also the reason for the complaints of the noisiness of the service. They only want to be notified of new information pertinent to them. They view themselves as recipients of information, but are being added as collaborators. Google Wave was designed for multiple users to produce a single piece of information, and then distribute that piece appropriately. As the service matures, and people begin to use it as intended, much of the noisiness will disappear. Google Wave doesn’t really satisfy many needs in the home user market, hence the negative reception by many bloggers.
Google Wave was designed using the XMPP notification system. This was important for the collaborative nature of the service. However, this brings a host of other functionality to Google Wave. Because of the open nature of XMPP, all sorts of clients can be developed. Imagine working on a document with others via your Instant Messaging client on your mobile device. Or perhaps getting to the office, and receiving an invite to collaborate on a piece of corporate communication inside your document productivity app (Word, Pages, OpenOffice). Or collaborating on an open letter from someone’s webpage. All sorts of uses. Ubiquitous collaboration from anywhere, anything.
If Google Wave fixes collaborative communications, how are these higher quality communications to be delivered? If it is supposed to be an E-mail killer, how do you ensure delivery and notification to the recipients? Expect them to open up Google Wave everytime they sit at their computer? Perhaps… after E-mail is dead. There is a long time between now and no E-mail. I suspect that Google will build in an E-mail delivery system. I’d also venture however, that they are looking to deliver notifications via XMPP to chat clients, or a custom built system tray notification app. Eventually Google Wave and IM will replace E-mail, but not for a long while.
Another aspect I’d suggest they’ll likely bring is trending. Imagine the statistics you could get from something like this. Which users contribute the best quality work, who communicates the most, what was being worked on at a given point in your corporate history. How your internal communications relate to the outside world on services like Twitter. All sorts of things to make a performance analyst’s mouth water.
One final aspect to consider. What will be the cost of this service? There’s a lot of bandwidth and potentially file storage that needs to be covered. My guess is that they will leave the service free for hone users, and sell physical appliances (similar to the Enterprise Google Search box) to the corporate world. I’d also guess they will target the education system. Imagine being a professor, and your students using their school accounts to write notes on your lectures together, and being able to view what they took away.
Google Wave brings anywhere, any-client collaboration to communications. Expect a ‘wave’ of different types of clients. Also expect higher quality internal corporate and education communications. As a home user or blogger, don’t expect too much. There is almost nothing you need here.
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- Google Wave Robots
- The real buzz about Google Buzz
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- Some Perspective on Google Ditching Windows
- Chrome Frame
Tags: Communications, Google, Google Wave, Wave