Google Wave and its Audacity of Scope

Blogger: Larry Cannell

As impressive as the recent Google Wave demonstration was, the most sensational part for me was the breadth of aspirations Google says it has for the platform and protocol. Sure, the product demonstrated has some very cool features, such as the blending of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration (for example, a user can see what others are changing within a page in realtime). But, when Lars Rasumussen says “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today” and we are told Google is open sourcing the protocol and software, then this starts looking like a grand plan indeed.

Call it the Audacity of Scope. This is not simply about a snazzy HTML 5-based application, Google is telling us it aspires to make Google Wave as pervasive as e-mail. However, realizing these aspirations is a long-shot. To have any hope of making it happen Google needs a strong extended-release dose of determination, flexibility, credibility, and lots of luck.

Determination: Google will certainly use its muscle on the Internet to make the Wave platform available and in the hands of as many people as possible. But fostering a federated system as pervasive as e-mail will take time. Ultimately, Google is a business and may not have the patience to see something like this all the way through.

Flexibility (and openness): E-mail wasn’t invented by a single company, but evolved as an idea over time. Although ARPA can be credited with creating and moving forward key e-mail standards. there were many more innovations that built on these simple protocols. If Google maintains sole control over the federation protocols then Wave will remain a Google-based service that many will integrate with, but will fall short of the pervasiveness of e-mail. Google needs to take steps to make Wave a truly open protocol.

Credibility: Getting vendors to agree to a standard is difficult, almost impossible when there is enough at stake (which is the case here). Don’t expect traditional IT vendors like Microsoft, IBM, or Oracle to be lining up behind this effort anytime soon.

Besides Internet-based services, open source is the only other method which has been successful in bypassing or breaking traditional IT-vendor lock-in within most large enterprises. So, another aspect to watch is how involved open source developers, and other open source projects, get with the Wave effort. If Google loses the open source crowd it loses its critical mass.

The key here will be what and how much of Google’s code will be open sourced. Rasumussen said “We intend to open source the lion share of the code we use to build our system.” This is a good start but what does this really mean in terms of code? To some, “lion share” sounds like Google is hedging its bet.

Luck: Google can do all of the right things for years and Google Wave may still not catch on. This is a long-term undertaking and many things can happen in the meantime to derail it (for example, management loses interest, an open source community doesn’t form, better alternatives emerge, or a million other things could go wrong).

But, regardless of all the hurdles Google faces with Wave I am still glad to they are attempting this. It’s great to see new ideas get this level of attention (and Google certainly can draw a crowd). If nothing else, the demonstration starts breaking down preconceived assumptions about how the Internet can support collaboration.

Comments

[John Moore]

Good post, I agree. I do believe, however, that Google has a real opportunity here, one that it will not pass up, it will succeed.

Wave is capable of going in multiple directions, if you are interested in why I view it as a potentially solid choice for a CRM system in the SMB market, read here:

http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/google-wave-smb-crm/

I would love your feedback.

John Moore
http://twitter.com/JohnFMoore