Google Wave – Like a Radioactive Dancing Squirrel

• emerging-tech
• google

I am beginning to get some laughs out of the raft of tweets about “Google Wave is like product x, combined with product y (with a bit of product z thrown in)”. It’s only natural that people try to liken it to other things they have seen (and I know I’m doing the same thing). I think the reality is that it’s actually quite a bit different from anything we have seen before (like the afore mentioned radioactive dancing squirrel for instance).

As Google convey in their presentation they started by asking the question: “What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?” Certainly an ambitious question. Email is something that has underpinned the web for many, many years. It’s like saying “What would public transport look like if we set out to invent it today?” There is both infrastructure that is entrenched and also established patterns for it’s use. Not that easy just to start again. Nonetheless, that’s the question Google have asked.

So bearing in mind the ambitious question Google asked, I think we are underselling what they have created to say it is like a combination of existing web concepts. It isn’t – watch the presentation (it’s pretty long, but if you can watch the first half an hour or so it’s worth the effort). You have a single object that represents a communication object on which invited participants collaborate… in real time if participants are available. Sure it’s built on existing technologies (XMPP – have a read of Vidar Hokstad’s post for more information), but I believe its implementation is quite new.

Yes, we can have realtime conversations on twitter, but every tweet is new – we reply by creating new tweets. We can send emails backwards and forward using gmail and other mail platforms, but once again every email is new. A wiki is getting close to the collaborative nature of wave (all authors are contributing to a single object), but I haven’t experienced using a wiki that plays as nice in a collaborative way (and there are some nice wiki engines). All three of these previous examples have similarities to what wave is, but they aren’t the same.

So, what is Google Wave? Well it’s new – a new way of thinking, requiring new systems and individuals to support it – we as developers and companies will ultimately determine what it becomes.

So to Google – let us at it.

Squirrel picture courtesy of zhippieone from deviantart.