Google Wave: Perturbing the Data Pond
August 11, 2009
I read Anil Dash’s “What Works: The Web Way vs. The Wave Way” and scanned some of the comments about his write up. I agree with most of the information in the write up. The one point I would add is that Wave is not one thing. Wave is a plastic bag made of Google technology that contains quite a number of features and functions. Some of these can operate as a stand alone service; for example, Gmail, the JavaScript beastie of remarkable capability. Other functions need the Google datasphere to work; for example, the time slicing across different Google functions. In my opinion, until the plastic bag metaphor is considered, analyses of Wave will be in terms of software such as SharePoint, which is too limiting for the Googlers’ innovation.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009