JT’s Blog

Google’s Wave

Posted by jt - 12/07/09 at 09:07 am

Yesterday I got introduced to Google Wave.  This is by far the most exciting technology announcement that I have seen in a very long time.  Google Wave is a disruptive technology that is going to change the internet as we know it today.  Hat’s off to the dev team behind this.  The whole concept is brilliant.

But what is it?  Well, its kind of like email, IM, and wiki mashed into one.  A ‘Wave’ is a communication thread.  You can add a person to the thread, like email.  The other party can respond on the thread – but you see their response real time, as they type it.   It goes beyond that, the ‘wave’ document becomes like a wiki page.  Any party on the wave can contribute and edit it.  All the content is ‘versioned’, allowing you to flashback in time.

Any editing on a Wave is realtime for all members.  Whether its 2 people, 5, or 10.  If multiple people are editing the wave, each will see the others edits in real time.

Other key features:

• Smart spell checking.  It goes beyond checking the spelling of the word, but also checks the context.  “Have you bean to the store?” would get corrected.
• Real time translation of 42 languages.
• Smart URL checking.  If you embed a youtube video url, the video content is embedded – not just a url link.
• Open API/Open Source.

Google has nailed the ‘cool’ factor on this application.  Their brilliance did not stop with just the features of the application.  This is not just Gmail 2.0.  A key feature of Google Wave is federated identities.  What this means is organizations will be able to set up Wave independent servers, much like email servers & allow waves to be shared with external entities.  This is absolutely core to enterprise adaptation of Google Wave.  In an era of increasing regulation, companies need the ability to administer and secure their own servers.   This will allow companies to roll out Google Wave while staying compliant with regulations such as SOX, PCI, and HIPAA.

Shannon Greywalker made some pretty bold claims in her blog about Google Wave (here).   A few of her claims include:

• “Waves are going to become the underlying format of every social networking site that wants to survive.  Seriously.  Even FaceBook will become irrelevant very soon if they don’t adopt Google Wave with open arms. “
• “Waves are eventually going to replace email as we know it.”
• “…Google Wave is also going to change aspects of every business that currently relies on communication and collaboration tools of any sort…”
• “Google Wave will ultimately also change the tools that technical writers use, and the way that they collaborate with their subject matter experts, their reviewers and their editors.”

Wow, those are some bold claims!  Is she right?  Yes.  If anything, I think she might be underestimating the impact Google Wave is going to have.  The impact on social networking and agile development Google Wave will have is clear.  I am excited about what Google Wave means for application development in an agile environment.  But this is just one facet of the wave of change we are going to see.  Think about what Google Wave could do for the enterprise help desk?  Now take that to the next step – customer care.   This technology could take the whole CRM market like a tsunami.

But the wave doesn’t stop there.  I can see it rolling though the whole ERP stack of applications.  Some day ERP systems will be fully integrated with the technology in Google Wave.  Oracle Applications, SAP, PeopleSoft will all look different years from now.

Shannon states Microsoft will need to integrate Outlook with Google Wave to survive.   Which brings up a good point.  What about Microsoft?  Their Chief Architect, Ray Ozzy, is already calling Google Wave “anti-web“.  Clearly Microsoft doesn’t get it.  The “Windows Everywhere” philosophy is a dinosaur.   Microsoft is a dinosaur.  What has happened to the innovation from Microsoft?  .NET?  Yawn.  This was just Java recycled into “windows everywhere”.  MS Office?  Great product.  But can you name anything significant from this product line in the last 5 years?

Do I think Google Wave will be the demise of Microsoft?  No.  I do think it will play out much like the rush to the internet did where initially Microsoft missed the web boat in a big way.  They’ll continue to downplay Google Wave, then a few years from now we’ll have a Exchange Server for Wave.  Are we going to see a .NET Exchange 2015, Wave Edition?

Microsoft is just one company of many that is going to miss the wave.  To loosely quote Shannon one last time – Google made history on Thursday May 28th.

Its 1981 again & IBM just announced the personal computer. . . .

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 12th, 2009 at 9:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. The entry is tagged under Google Wave. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.