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What Has Google Wave Done to Us?

by Jorge Escobar on October 1, 2009

Has the Geek world gone mad?

Since Google’s announcement of their messaging-slash-mail-slash-wiki-slash-platform, otherwise known as Google Wave, the world has been impatiently waiting for its release.

Unfortunately Google is making us to get down on our knees to get it. Hell, some people are ready to pay $27,000 to get it. Others are, I have to say it, abusing people to subscribe to their blogs, newsletters, marketing ploys to have a shot at one invite.

According to what I’ve read, they are releasing it little by little, because of scalability concerns.

I thought Google was good at scalability.

But of course, it could make sense, as Wave pushes the boundaries of what can be done with Real-time, Javascript, Python, AJAX, real-time apps have done to this day.

Some say Flash could’ve done this 5 years ago. But Google is so good at releasing Beta products with no advertising whatsoever, and yet the whole world-wide-web is yearning for them for days, months and sometimes what feels like years.

Some people are calling it sort of a glorified instant messenger.

Louis Gray has made the best review of it, in my opinion. He basically says “give it time”:

I would bet that after the initial surge of curiosity, normal conversations and information exchange will eventually take over, so this initial spike may be an exception rather than the new rule.

I was not one of the chosen ones, and couldn’t sleep properly, checking my G1 every two hours or so to see if I had been selected. I had no luck.

I’ve had access to my friend Joel’s sandbox for months now and I’ve played with it and I think until everyone has access to it, Google Wave will just be the promised land that we are all dreaming about but it’s not really reachable or usable for that matter.

Let the other geeks play with it, break it and improve it.

We’ll be waiting for the real experience when it is no longer a @googlewave.com account.

Update: Robert Scoble says “Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype”

Photo by misterjared

Tagged as: googlewave

12 Comments 7 Tweets

{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }

Andrés David Aparicio October 1, 2009 at 2:09 pm

It has turned as into groveling beggars ;)

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Keith Bennett October 1, 2009 at 2:10 pm

And the honest truth is that it’s probably more hyped up than it is actually useful at the moment.

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Christopher A Carr October 1, 2009 at 2:11 pm

Hey, you guys got a nomination or two you want to send my way? *starts weeping*

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Jorge Escobar October 1, 2009 at 2:27 pm

@Keith the key word is "at the moment"

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Andrés David Aparicio October 1, 2009 at 2:29 pm

Keith: maybe but more than usefulness the point is that we are long overdue for this kind of change. I think our response shows that there is an unspoken need to change something about the way we process all this information. I think we reached and left behind our biological limits for information processing a long time ago and the tools we are currently using were designed under the "old way of processing". Wave, and whatever comes after it, are just attempts to build the next generation of cognivite prostheses, ones that are better suited to handle the current information flow.

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Megan Donovan October 1, 2009 at 2:58 pm

Jorge,
I like the crying baby picture. It let me smile, although I’m not one of the chosen ones, but I think it’s time for a change how we can communicate and it will take a big company like Google or Microsoft to get it out to millions of users. It will be interesting to see how people accept it and whether they replace their old habits.

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Todd October 1, 2009 at 2:58 pm

There’s a lot of hype, yes. But email must, no, *WILL* die.

Anything that hastens the death of E-FAIL, be it hype or not, I wholeheartedly support.

Reminder: Every time an IT department delete its install of Outlook ( usurped by Wave ), an angel gets its wings.

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Jorge Escobar October 1, 2009 at 3:02 pm

Thanks Megan. I feel like the crying baby without the invite :)

Seriously, though, I agree with what you, Andres and Todd say, E-mail has had its run, and Google Wave *might* be the first right step towards improving communications in the 21st century.

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Jorge "Waveless" Escobar October 1, 2009 at 4:53 pm

The fact that there’s so much interest for Wave is either a demonstration of ignorance from people about what it is, the fact that there’s so limited access to it that it drives hype up or that people really want to have something better than E-mail

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Daniel J. Pritchett October 1, 2009 at 4:56 pm

People love GMail, they want Wave to be even better than GMail. It’s just not there yet, especially since it’s not directly compatible with all of the zillions of email and IM accounts already out there.

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Daniel J. Pritchett October 1, 2009 at 4:56 pm

People love GMail, they want Wave to be even better than GMail. It’s just not there yet, especially since it’s not directly compatible with all of the zillions of email and IM accounts already out there. Wave would be great if the people we work with were on it, but they’re not.

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Adrian Malone October 1, 2009 at 4:57 pm

I offered to bake cookies for an invite… *cries* I’m a monster!!

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Jorge "Waveless" Escobar October 1, 2009 at 5:08 pm

Shame on you Adrian! LOL

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Keith Bennett October 1, 2009 at 5:48 pm

I think Daniel has hit the nail on the head. At the moment it’s a bells and whistles IM client. Longer term it may replace email, I’m just not sure how right now.

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Chris Owen October 2, 2009 at 3:52 am

Anything that nearly kills email (and stops our teams wasting time) yet still communicates and retains a log of the project…
..will take over the world.
I want it.
I wanted yesterday.
I wanted it 15 years ago.

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Tamar Weinberg October 2, 2009 at 11:00 am

I should have sold my invites for $27,000…..

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Alexander Ewering October 2, 2009 at 1:02 pm

I’ve also begged for an invite, and I had already been in contact with Google earlier (Google Summer of Code mentoring), so, I had expected sort of a positive reply. Nothing yet though :-(

Oh well, who knows how they choose their testers – and I’ve developed Wave-like (albeit not exactly that complex) systems myself, so that wouldn’t be too bad a choice for a beta tester ;)

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