Google won't run all the Wave servers
In a recent story about how Google creatively destroys markets, I said that only Google will run the servers for Wave, its re-think of e-mail. I was wrong about that, as Google reps took pains to tell me. I want to set the record straight. What Google is doing with the Wave communications architecture is important enough that it merits its own story, not just a strikeout in the original.
Google has said it will "federate" Wave. That means it will make it possible for anyone to operate their own Wave server and have it communicate with other Wave servers. This is just how e-mail works today: Anyone can run an e-mail server that can send messages to and receive messages from any other e-mail system. The Internet routes messages from server to server.
In contrast, only Google runs the Gmail servers.
Google's Wave architecture does not rely on Google servers. Click image for link to Google's whitepaper.
(Credit: Google)I was told that anyone will be able to "build their own Wave server without involvement from Google." That means corporations and governments will be able to deploy their own instances of Wave inside their secure firewalls if they like, and decide how or if they want to open up their servers to the outside world. For businesses with strict data retention and auditing requirements (e.g., all public companies, governmental agencies, health care businesses, etc.), this also means that they'll be able to write in software to meet their needs; or that other companies will be able to create and sell Wave servers. (If, that is, business gets behind Wave at all.)
However, sources familiar with the intricacies of building a real-time synchronization engine, which is what Wave is, tell me that it is incredibly challenging to make such a system work "at scale." Showing off a Wave demo is one thing. But a successful, well-performing, wide-scale rollout requires advanced technology that few companies have the chops to write, and it's hard to keep performance up as the size of the user community grows. This may be why the original planned release of Wave to developers outside Google has been delayed by several days.
Wave will be based on (and extend on) the existing messaging standard, XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). So a lot of Web developers will be able to get started quickly on writing Wave extensions and apps, as well as building their own servers to run Wave or back-end services for their Wave plug-ins.
Wave may represent new thinking about packaging real-time communication, but it's not based on 100 percent new or proprietary technology, so we might see some interesting third-party extensions to Wave very shortly after it starts rolling out to the public.
I stand by the rest of my story, especially my main thesis: Google destroys entrenched markets. That's not a bad thing, though. Especially when it comes to e-mail.
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe. 
What does this have to do with your article, or for that matter reality?
Gmail is a frontend to the email system. SMTP which currently, EVERY mail message is sent over, and has been for the last oh +20 years. That's part of the building blocks of the Internet.
Gmail is more akin to Outlook Express or Hotmail, than what you are talking about. OF COURSE only Google runs Gmail servers. That's their frontend.
Now why is this important? Because it goes to my ability to believe what you write, that you are getting it right.
Wave, isn't like SMTP, or it potentially could be if they took it to the IETF, and it was just a protocol, but its a server that they are putting into the open source community. That's a bit like Apache.
At least have a basic understanding when you write about these things.
I'm not sure if Google is going to release the Wave server code or just the Wave protocols.
Gmail is it's own little world, which has some degree of compatibility with existing client-access methods.
What they are proposing here is something completely new built on new standards. As such, there wouldn't be issues of half-compatibility.
I'm not defending Google, here. Indeed, I have a bit of trouble grasping just what problem they are trying to solve. They need to come up with a one-paragraph or better one-sentence description of what it is and why it is needed. As it is, I really don't see how it relates to email at all. Instant messaging != email. They have different purposes and uses, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to try to muddle them together.
We DO need a new, ground-up redesign of email that will solve security, authentication, and spam issues. I'm just not sure that this is it.
It's certainly valid, in any case, to contrast the approach Google is taking with Wave with that of Gmail.
And while we're on protocols, wave is also like SMTP. Exactly like it. There's a wave protocol. Weirdly, at http://www.waveprotocol.org/
Would you like us now to direct jerk responses to you?
-- That's a valid point. GMail interacts with all the other SMTP machines on the Net. However, the underlying server --- code of GMail is Google's own, and has not been shared, at least not as far as I know.
-- I'm not sure if Google is going to release the Wave server code or just the Wave protocols.
None is sharing or open source their underlying server-code. Yahoo didn't, MS well we all know don't share, why you want Google share GMail server-code. That is the premise of GWT toolkit that you write client and communicate with your server code. Wave will be the same thing, there will be server/provider (Google will be the first), client code (the one you see on demo). But others could write their own client code as Thunderbird for email client, one also freely to implement their server code according to wave protocol specs. But Wave is more federated than anything we have currently.
Google have said they will release their implementation of Wave. This can be a "starting point" (or you just shoehorn in your own logos). You can build your own custom implementation (and even then having Google's "reference implementation" is useful to test against).
And the Gmail thing has nothing to do with anything. Although they have released the building blocks (GWT).
May be microsoft has technical chops to rollout such technology. Oh wait....
Because Google wants to "Federate" Wave, any company will be able to run a Wave server which will interact with other Wave servers- just like any company can run an SMTP server that interacts with other SMTP servers.
Wave and Email are exactly alike in that regard. The rest is just details: for example, I don't know how a Wave server is going to do the equivalent of an MX lookup. But those details WILL come.
It's going to be interesting. As I said in an earlier comment, I think most of us WILL transition to Wave. "Google won't own all the Wave servers" was what the author originally misunderstood. That means that while I have "pcunix@googlewave.com" now, I might put a WAve server at my own domain, just as I do for email now. Or, that domain's Waves may be handled by someone like Google - just as Google handles some domains SMTP servers now.
Like SIP Proxies? Wow that is so not exciting and it sounds like Google learned not to lock people into GAE by creating a SIP like infrastructure.
These are hard things to do.
Can someone please gag this Technological Charlatan?
As to what Google intends to provide with wave: they specify the wave protocol, AND they intend to provide the wave server and wave client as open source. Quoting from http://www.waveprotocol.org/ :
"our plan is to release an open source, production-quality, reference implementation of the Google Wave client and server, as well as provide an open federation endpoint by the time users start getting access".
That's the great thing about technology, not just google, but the whole tech industry is about creative destruction. If you miss one chance, don't worry, another one will be along shortly.
Ken
http://www.kenstech.com
I can already see that for some communications, a Wave is much better than email. However, when you start such a conversation, you don't necessarily know that it will turn out that you'd like it as a Wave. Therefore, given the option, I'd just start every conversation as a Wave.
There's nothing (other than unwritten software) stopping Wave from interacting with email during the transition. If that software existed, I could add you to a Wave and if you didn't have (or want) Wave, you'd see the conversaion as separate email messages. If you reply, we'd see that as part of the Wave.
Sooner or later, most people would probably start using Wave rather than email. You don't lose anything, you only gain.
- Cars (electric)
- Energy (wind, solar, geothermal)
- Music & Video (streaming, online stores)
- Publishing (eReaders)
- Mobile (smartphones)
- Computer Hardware (netbooks, smartbooks, MIDs)
- Displays (eInk, OLED)
- Software Sales (app stores)
- ...
Major industry shifts happen and sometimes there are casualties. Didn't the transistor almost destroy the vacuum tube? Didn't the PC almost destroy the mainframe?
Google and Apple just happen to be two of the key leaders in this generation's tech shift. Who knows who it will be the next time?
However, as a basic principle this is very interesting. Things I would hope to see incorporated by default would be connection encryption (via SSL as a minimum) and some sort of PGP/GPG based signature system for legitimate message sending to lock out spam remailer botnets. I can see this being something which would be more useful for work collaboration than anything else. Consider this from a guy who's getting sick of seeing all the @soandso replies outside of Twitter. If I want to see more mangling of the English language I'll sign up to Twitter myself and befriend a gang of dyslexic teenagers. Use proper English. I look forward to the spellchecker that can correct the abominable misuse of 'loose' and 'lose'.
Yes, I'm aware the spammers will find ways around it but it's like cleaning; there'll always be dirt but that doesn't mean you stop cleaning because you'll end up buried under garbage, contract toxic plasmosis and die if you do. The only way to stop the scum taking over is to keep upping the ante.
Rest assured, Google will find a way to add bells and whistles that are unavailable elsewhere but don't break their implementation's ability to do the basic tasks with others' as will other companies using this.
- by liquidmetalband June 1, 2009 2:01 AM PDT
- Google's product is closed-source, so frankly, all this means is that Google will be saving money on bandwidth.
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- by odubtaig June 1, 2009 2:20 AM PDT
- No. It's not. They've stated quite clearly that it will be released as 100% open source. If no-one else uses it because Google controls it too tightly it won't even be useful to Google.
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