What would email look like if it was invented today?
That’s the question Google asked themselves when they decided to create a new communications system that simply blows traditional email out of the water. That system was announced today and it’s called Google Wave. Preliminary reviews are coming in and the prognosis is good, even exceptional.
Don’t worry, you still use your regular email address. Only now you get the functionality of instant messaging, website integration, drag and drop photo sharing, community collaboration, website content writing, Twitter integration – oh and email too, but the list goes on.
It’s all based on HTML 5 which has become the standard for all modern web browsers which means it will not run on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) without plugins. That’s because Microsoft IE is not considered a modern web browser in most developer’s tribes.
Ambitious as hell. The demo at the Google I/0 ended with a standing ovation.
I have not done it justice trying to explain what Google Wave is here. The best explanation I have found, which I encourage you to read, is here. Register to be the first to sign up here.
Paul, I was lucky enough to be in the cheering crowd! The impact of the announcement was indeed staggering. I plan to post a few thoughts of my own on the subject, but briefly, I think it’s important to remember the 3 “P”s of the Wave, as they were presented at the Google I/O: Product, Platform and Protocol.
- Product: very impressive HTML5 driven client in the browser: real time data push, fully built on GWT (doesn’t run in IE, althought IE7 is close to working).
- Platform: even more impressive! Wave will have open APIs! The demonstration included snippets where a wave “gadget” was included on a 3rd party website and was interacting in real time with the “dashboard”. Another demo showed a bug report being created directly from the wave client in a bug reporting system
- Protocol: most obscure but probably *THE* most impressive. There will be no single central location where wave is “hosted”. It’s not going to be Google, or any other major vendor. Just like modern mail servers, it will be possible to host “wave servers” locally to a business. In fact, it will probably be very much like running a mail server: it’s the open federation that will make the things tick.
It’s hard to underestimate this. If (and only if) this take off and indeed gets traction and adoption; this could lead to a paradigm shift in the way that communication happens on the internet. Such forms of communication as email, instant messaging, micro-blogging, blogging, forums, newsgroups, etc may all blend into one: waves. (If wave takes off, which I very much hope it will.) I am sure it won’t be a trivial task and it will take someone of Google’s magnitude to do it.
Hi Bill, I am glad you went. I have heard the presentation was impressive. Thanks for describing the 3 “P”s here. It makes a lot of sense now when many forecast it to be a success.