Google Wave Analysis: Closer but Not Quite Spot On
October 16, 2009
I found Daniel Tenner’s article one of the better discussions of Google Wave. If you have an interest in Google Wave, read “What Problems Does Google Wave Solve?”. Mr. Tenner addresses specific issues and points out how Google Wave approaches each. One example is lost attachments. The idea is that people read email, download an attachment, delete or file the original email, and then have a tough time locating a specific attachment. This is an annoyingly common problem for quite a few people. Google Wave is a digital plastic bag. Stuff in the bag is together so the lost email attachment is in the plastic bag and indexed by the Google. Ergo, no more lost attachments. This way of describing Google Wave is a lot better than most I have read.
The problem is that relating Google Wave to what is familiar is not exactly what my research suggests the Google is doing. Wave is a subset, like the programmable search engine or the trust method, of a larger data management issue on which
Google is working. Explaining that broader initiative is difficult because it leapfrogs over the “common problems” and delivers new types of queries and, therefore, new types of applications.
Wave is not a finished product or even a complete service. Wave is a component. Just as folks are learning that Chrome is not a “just a browser”, analysts have to step bag and put Wave into its Google context. Until that takes place, Wave like many other Google betas will be perceived as one thing. Then when the full picture is complete, the “one thing” morphs into a more complex suite of services.
Google is a clever beastie, allowing analysts to define their products while the broader picture remains undetected. Wave is such a creature.
Stephen Arnold, October 16, 2009
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We offer our initial hands-on review of Google Wave in a post, Google Wave: Essential Collaboration Tool of 2011 at:
http://allcollaboration.com/home/2009/11/12/google-wave-essential-collaboration-tool-of-2011.html