There’s been a lot of hype and excitement since the idea of Google Wave was launched a few months ago – fueled by a tantalizing video.
jkOnTheRun, for example, gushes about Google Wave even though James Kendrick hasn’t been in the beta:
“Google Wave is an incredible technology that is hard to fully understand. It is messaging, email and real-time web collaboration all rolled into one, and the implications are far-reaching.”
The excitement about Google Wave has a lot to do with the idea it can be the place where you can do everything and anything, driven by a ecosystem of developers creating applications.
Having seen a demo of Wave yesterday, and been walked through it by co-founders Jens and Lars Rasmussen, I’d suggest Wave has potential but it’s difficult to get a good idea about whether the buzz is justified, or it’s just the geeks being stoked about something new and shiny.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Google will eventually make Wave into something really interesting and useful but right now it’s work in progress. During the one-hour demo, it was clear that a lot more still has to be done, particularly relating to stability, speed and usability.
To me, the usability issue is paramount. I found the interface to be confusing, the iconography to be less than user-friendly, and the flow to be unintuitive. The demo involved a collaborative chat, which was sort of worked but it wasn’t smooth or simple.
My takeaway is Wave isn’t really ready to be shown to reporters given many of the features and functionality aren’t fully baked. I’m not talking about applications, which would help showcase Wave’s functionality and power, but the stability of the platform.
This means Google has an awful lot of work to do over the next five weeks as it gets Wave ready for Sept. 30 when the beta community will swell to 100,000 users.
The most interesting part of yesterday’s demo about monetization. Jens Rasmussen said the options include running ads against content (AdSense), as well as making Wave a part of Google Apps, which Google sells for $50 per seat/year.
“We plan to make Wave part that suite, which is why we are including some of those customers in the September preview,” he said. “We hope that it will drive additional sales of that product.”
When asked about a timeline for a more public demo, Rasmussen said a date hasn’t been set yet. Following the Sept. 30 launch, he said Google will spend a month feedback and server loads, and then determine the next steps.
At the end of the day, I’m sure Wave will be just fine and attract millions of users. Right now, however, it got a long, long way to go.
For some solid perspective on Wave, check out the Chicago Sun-Times’ Andy Ihnatko, who gives Google credit for being open about Wave’s development rather than making it a stealth project.
Google Wave is, Well, Interesting | Mark Evans Tech
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Yes, I also have the same feeling, that it will take more time that email for people to get used to wave, or learn wave
I have been in the beta and while it has a few cool features, I grew tired of it really quick. Of course being in beta they still have a few issues but the big one has to do with performance when it comes to large waves.
Waves should be thought of as a communication channel where people can post email like info, gadgets loaded, robot scripts participating and users able to chat all at once. This would lead people to create and expand waves into large threads. For instance, one wave on there has over 4000 changes, additions and gadgets spitting out all sorts of info. The problem is, you have to load this content when you open the wave! It takes forever to (no matter how you fetch and cache it) to load all this.
The concepts Google Wave has is very interesting, but I see serious hurdles they will need to get over when it comes to performance and usability. So much data can be thrown at you at once on a wave. People will feel overwhelmed I think and if people don't go into launching their own wave servers, they problems will just get worse.
Oh and not to mention things like robots… right now to create a script I have to install Java/Python, a Google Wave library, host my app on App Engine, communicate with Google Wave via a brand new API/protocol and some how piece all this together to get a robot to say "Hello World". That needs simplification I think.
Still promising though.
It hasn't even been released to beta yet.
It is in a developer beta testing round, not open to the general public but currently has thousands of developers (outside the company) are testing it. So yeah, it is a beta, just limited to a select few.
I have been on Google Wave for over a month now.
Google Wave is indeed a revolutionary technology which will eventually change the communication and collaboration scenario of the world, for the better. The idea that all your emails, chats, messaging, video conferencing, file sharing, presentations, and so on, will take place from the same window and in a contextualized manner instead of in discrete tools, is indeed very attractive.
It is also very true that Google Wave is still ‘work-in-progress’. These ideas and concepts are however around for a quite some time: Colayer has started one decade ago to work on similar ideas – see for example:
"Collaboration Support and Context: future directions shown by Google Wave and Colayer" by Barry Hardy
http://barryhardy.blogs.com/theferryman/2009/06/d…
And experiance Colayer, at their Virtual Reception: http;//colayer.com