Comments on: Gmail in real-time: Google does the Wave

Google unveils an ambitious project to create what it calls the "e-mail of the future," and the reactions of developers at Google I/O will be telling.

[peterpv]

awesome to use with friends and groups, but not really for business -- because it's not secure.

[robnyack]

WooHoo!! Now I can Facebook w/o going to Facebook

snoozeville.

[johnny_ray3g]

google does it again! always innovating...i love it! I use outlook every single day at work and if you think this is in anyway similar to outlook you're obviously missing the big picutre and not seeing the potential!

[swu88]

I'd much rather use a google product anyday in place of Outlook. I write this as I wait to read my e-mail as Outlook downloads a 30mb file someone inconveniently sent me. Hmm - if my office switched to gmail, maybe I wouldn't be wasting time here.

And seriously, how can you even start to compare an open source product that is free to something that costs $200+ and still can't even effectively screen junk mail???

[smittydvd]

Once again I thing Google has taken their time to develop another technology that will dominate its niche. This time though at the expense of twitter and possibly a good portion of the social media market. They have taken the better part of 4 years to thoroughly look into the future and develop one platform that seemingly will solve a multitude of problems as well as reduce cpu & system drag (we can only hope).

[Nskinz]

Looks like Outlook? I didn't realise that outlook translated languages in real time! Or could collaboratively work with other versions of Outlook hosted at other company's sites. Or let users edit online documents at the same time. Playback? Been Soup? (sic). APIs? Open?

Take an hour and 20 minutes to have a look at the product release on the web site before you make half assed comments like that based on nothing more than a screen shot.

4000 odd developers were more than slightly excited about this after the demo, glitches and all

[galeso]

Looks like MSPaint to me ;-)

Let say it looks like Outlook. I was using Outlook until I got Vista. I just could not make myself cough up the bucks for Office. Now I use Open Office and Google products with no regrets.

The question is does/will Wave works as well or better and will it be cheaper for companies when all costs like support costs are included. If it works better and is cheaper most companies will migrate. I would wait 6 months to see how Wave and it's APIs progress.

[VJ_LYNCH]

this is huge! google knows how to spend money, well and truely worth every penny

[DesElms]

Thinking of Wave in terms of "replacing" such as GMAIL (or even email, itself) is just silly. Not every Internet communication needs to be (or even should be) as would be in Wave. Traditional email, at the very least, should (and likely will) never go away. Of this, I think there should be little fear or doubt.

Now, that doesn't mean there won't be a place -- and a potent one, indeed -- in our lives for such as Wave and its ineluctable variants. It, too, will be useful, under the right circumstances. In fact, from my admittedly only-cursory analysis of it to date, I'm thinking that what actually MAY be "replaced" by Wave, as a practical matter, is traditional "chat," as we now know it (though traditional chat, mark my words, will continue to be around for years and years, too, no matter how good Wave ultimately gets).

Regardless, one thing about which we should all be clear in our minds is that we're not talking about the mere replacing of anything, here. Wave, for better or worse, seems very nearly of the nature of paradigm shift... and far be it from me to suggest that that's, necessarily, a bad thing, here.

It does, however, come with pitfalls about which we should all be watchful, if not actually downright concerned. For example, though it's now coming out in articles (and/or rebuttals to such as I am posting here) that it's likely to be user-configurable, initial writings about Wave touted the ability (and represented it as essential to Wave's very way of operating) of all persons in a "wave" (or a thread) to be able to see, in real time, all others' keystrokes, as they type.

Let me repeat the salient words of that, here: AS. THEY. TYPE.

Think about that, please, for just a moment. It's a far larger problem than, perhaps, it initially seems. Like how sausage is made (or, as some joke, like how laws are passed), some things in life may better be left something of a mystery to those who ultimately consume (or are regulated by) them; and, most importantly, solely at the creator's option.

The ultimate impact and meaning to the reader of anything written would be inordinately influenced by said reader's having been a witness to its creation. If one is a thoughtful writer who doesn't just blurt out every wayward thing which flits through one's brain, then one is going to pause to think while one types, and back-up and delete and re-type, and whatever else behind-the-scenes activity goes into what ends-up being the finished written product. If the reader were able to witness what the writer merely paused before writing; or actually did write, but then thought better of and either removed or changed to something else, then the bell of what the reader saw along the way cannot be un-rung; and the reader's ultimate interpretation and understanding of the final written result will be indelibly affected in ways (even if not immediately obvious) more likely than not to be inherently bad for all concerned.

Now, if it's true...

Continued at www.greggdeselms.com/google_wave.html

[sujitgr8]

Google wave looks cool. Powerful fracture looks line maintaining context of communication . I have seen such a similar tool. colayer.com . This is looking very mush similar to google wave. I seen the whole wavw video . colayer covers all those featues and its alradya there is the market.

[svk1069]

Google Wave already exists. It's called Zenbe Shareflow: http://blog.zenbe.com/2009/06/02/beyond-email/

[sujitgr8]

Contextualization is missing in email , with wave it looks like Contextualization is the root of wave. With email every one keep sending lots of emails in replay . And then just gets lost in forest.....
Wave is amazing Drag & drop , co-editing , blog posts , play back and so on waiting to use it.
as a part of web communication development company colayer i am very eager to find out how the wave will be!

[taranfx]

Google wave is a revolution, will change the way you communicate today
Forget your Mail, IM, Facebook
<a href="http://www.taranfx.com/blog/?p=1445">How Google Wave is a Killer App for Converged Email, IM, Forums, Social, Enterprise</a>
http://www.taranfx.com/blog/?p=1445

[Jonathan]

***? Why are people adding Apple as some great innovator? Name me one thing that Apple has released in the last 8 years that is remotely as innovative as Wave. That takes a chance at changing how we communicate? The iPhone....Try again. The iPod? Yes it kicked manufacturers in the nuts and showed them to how to do it right. But other then that Apple does not innovate. The evolve a product line. Generally just making it thinner which DOES NOT = Innovation. Sorry but please stop comparing the current Apple to Google. Sure 15 years ago when you would see cutting edge ideas coming out of Apple. Sure they were innovative. Now? They play it safe with product that have little chance of failure and as such really do not try ans push things forward in a new direction.
Google on the other hand has had several flops along the way. And that is to be expected with real innovation. Some ideas work. Some don't. Its a risk, but the reward...well the reward is Google Wave.

[Jonathan]

As for Wave. The level of cluelessness is staggering in this thread. Unless you've watched the presentation you don't get how big this is going to be for online collaboration. If I'm in a meeting I can open a wave with someone across the room. We can chat and throw out ideas. Drop a presentation in the Wave...mark it up. Write the answers to the questions we have directly in the wave. Invite someone who isn't at the meeting to the wave who can do a quick overview with what we've already written with the playback feature. Drop any questions she has in there. I ask the question. Type the response. She gets it right now on her HTML5 compatible phone. That is business.

Imagine linking this in with Twitter, facebook, Livejournal. Add them all together in a single Wave in your inbox. So a chat on Facebook shows up on Livejournal, and can be responded to on Twitter without needing to have every single service drastically change how it functions. All it needs is Wave and to use its API's. This is going to take a few years. However this is going to change everything. You no longer will need 15 bagillion sites to communicate with your friends. A single conversation can be done in a Wave.

And as for the people saying. Well its just IRC. Well its just chat in your inbox. Well its just Outlook. Right and Wrong. Its all of that in a single consolidated design that anyone and any site can integrate. As an example comment systems and forums will be going away with Wave. The only down side is that Wave is going to take flame wars to a whole new level.

I've seen things like this before....While the term is ridiculously abused I do think Gwave is going to be a game changer for the net and businesses because I'm willing to bet that plenty of companies are going to be dropping a Google Appliance Server in their data center so they can have internal waves. Just wait and see.

[robertsveridian]

It´s horses for courses, some people naturally resist change. If you like keeping email seperate from images, documents, collaboration tools then by all means stick with the 5 tools on your desktop that all have difficulty talking to each other and are a complete pain for Network Admins to manage.
For the Legal documents users requirements I´m sure Wave Servers you can keep inhouse and secured are not far away.
As for the Artsy Startup comment puleeeze! Many companies would benefit from a tool that allows teams from many different disciplines and locations to collaborate and share ideas and media in realtime across the globe. I worked on a global project using 400 contract developers collaborating via Lotus Notes and that is a product that in my experience truly sucked with possibly the worst interface I have ever seen. Google seem to have done a better job right out of the gate.
I hated Gmail when I first tried it, but then it took me a while to get why it was so fundementally good, simply because I was used to email being a certain way...
There will always be people who just want to knock the idea, like all the people who said the iPhone was a pointless device for trendies. Yet the entire mobile hardware market is now avidly following that trend.
At least Google is trying something new, so some of us will jump on the wave because change and innovation is what Humans are mostly about. Some will just carp and ask why things can´t remain the same, which is why god invented Microsoft Outlook bless thier ludite hearts.
I´m willing to bet that within 2 years most software providors communication tools will have consolidated functions not that different to Wave.