Google Wave is a hodgepodge of e-mail, photo sharing, chat

Google Wave combines e-mail, documents, photo sharing and chat in one Web app. Credit: Google

Ever feel like you have information overload?

You start Gmail to find a few dozen new messages, thousands of spams and a bunch of friends shouting at you via instant message the moment you sign-in.

Then, you hop over to Picasa, Google's photo-sharing software, to find your family and friends have just uploaded hundreds of snapshots of their trip to Aruba or of your baby cousin.

Finally, you make a pit stop in Google Docs to see that your co-worker has added a few new documents that need your approval.

Could Google Wave, the new product that the company announced today at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, help us cut through the noise?

Probably not. The app just dumps everything onto one page.

The interface should be familiar to Gmail users -- just with a lot more stuff. If you've checked out the iGoogle custom home page, that should give you a better idea of the hyper-integration that Google is going for.

Wave displays your e-mail in one column and your incoming photos in another. Folders sit on the left side-bar followed by contacts, which you can access to start new communications, called "waves." And with ...

... the help of developers, feeds from Facebook, Twitter and just about any social network could also find themselves plunked down somewhere in Wave's cluttered interface.

Google Wave offers inline user collaboration. Credit: Google

Wave takes Gmail's concept of threaded e-mail conversations to a whole new level. Every chain of data -- be it a photo with comments or a series of messages related to one topic -- travels together.

So, if you invite a new participant to the discussion, that person will see all of the related information that came before his or her arrival -- and be able to add his or her two cents to any part of the conversation, not just at the bottom of the thread.

One interesting feature is the ability to watch as someone types. We're not talking about how most chat clients tell you when a friend is typing. You can literally watch in real time as each letter appears on the page and marvel at how slowly your dad types using his trademarked index-finger-poking strategy.

Google is calling Wave "the e-mail of the future." Considering that we keep reading reports about how young people say e-mail is dead, there's probably no better time for this than now. But if e-mail is dying, Google had better hope that Wave becomes "the e-communication of the future," not e-mail.

And sure, these changes certainly constitute a big step for the decades-old idea of e-mail. But will it be interoperable with existing e-mail providers, or are you stuck on the Wave?

-- Mark Milian

Comments

[Polomoche]

Crude and cluttered, but despite those flaws this is the "What hath God wrought" moment of future online communication... (Google "What hath God wrought" and "telegraph" if you don't know what I'm talking about)...

[Skylar]

Is everything being driving by 15yr olds with OCD.

All of these "features" are _completely_ useless for business applicatoins.

Maybe this is another reason our economy is tanking. Applications more interested in tweeting than producing.

[Curtis]

Mark, I think you're missing the point. "The app just dumps everything onto one page." It's a collaboration protocol that is a lot more tightly integrated than simply saying it's a hodgepodge of various differing apps. Watch some of the interviews with the creators and you'll get a better idea of the potential and the value of the announcement today. Dismissing Wave without fully understanding the concept is a boo-boo on your part.

[Mark Milian]

Curtis, I understand the concept. It's the initial execution that I don't think is very strong.

Just look at that UI. It's a mess of avatars and icons and thumbnails and blocks of text. They're trying to cram too much information onto the page.

But to be fair, it's still in private beta, so they could very well flesh out these issues before it's live. Right now, however, it's got a lot of promise and not a lot of polish.

[Jano]

I belive you are missing the point by far, all this optional functions, you can log in gmail and don't log in gtalk, with igoogle you choose what will appear to you, not just everything on your screen.
This new google wave (i hope) will let you configure what you want and what you don't want just like every other google service.

[John Jacobs]

Careful now, Google is going to rule the world one day!

RT
www.privacy-tools.echoz.com

[David Ferguson]

Mark:
Most other sites on the internet are praising Wave for getting so many features all together. You don't have to go to 15 different sites to do things. They making it easy for it all to flow together. You can dump as much stuff as you want on a single page as long as you can easily navigate it and find what you want.

Skylar:
Your just an idiot.

All:
I don't understand people's need to bash on other peoples creativity. Google provides quality services to millions of people, for free. Even though the service is free, people still want to complain and nitpick about every little thing. (This is more directed at Skylar) If you don't like the service, go somewhere else. If you don't like how they do things, go pay someone to make exactly what you want. At that point, you have reason to whine if it's not exactly to your liking. Better yet, if you don't like it, I challenge you to quit whining, and create something better.

[Musashi Miyamoto]

At first I thought twitter would be an overwhelming overflow of un-parsed information, yet look at its user base today. I think its inherent modularity will allow
users to do exactly what they have done with Facebook and Twitter, which is to pick and choose the content that is relevant to them.

[Steve Ryherd]

If you take this tech "demo" as the be-all end-all usage... you're definitely doing it wrong.

Imagine this scenario: You work at a law office; a new case comes in. Your secretary talks to the client and wants to send a message to you and your partner about it: She creates a new "wave" with you and your partners contacts on it.

You have a wave extension enabled to forward your new waves to your SMS. Your partner has an android phone and simply gets an alert. -- So by the time you are informed there's a new client, you open up the Wave and see that your partner has already called them back. -- He's had accepted the client and he's requested paperwork from them. They'll email the paperwork back to you (or potentially just upload it to a wave), and you'll automatically have those documents on file for the case.

For anyone who thinks this is "Crude and Cluttered" -- Realize that this is demo is based in a feed reader environment. Wave is more of a Protocol than an interface, potentially you can take any component of the "wave" data system and embed it into any interface you wish. -- Eg. the blog system for instance. Looked like a normal blog to me.

[CCarpo]

The Wave protocol is very interesting and what you make out of it is to your limits.
The Wave client might be not perfect for business applications but its features definitely are.
Lots of things you do in different application now or not yet at all (not because you won't need it but because your programs are simply not able to do it) can be achieved with one single platform, no matter if the client coms from google your you code it yourself.

[LeRoy Lee]

Google Wave is a tool with huge potential. It is different than what we are used to. That "hodge-podge" is the power of the tool. We don't know how to utilize it yet. I think the pm of wave was correct when she said that when they first started using it it was overwhelming and they were just beginning to find ways to use wave. I see a lot of books and a lot of applications for this tool.

It is my opinion that businesses will one day have their own wave install customized to interact with a myriad of apps.

[Chris]

The power this has will be very powerful. Business uses are endless. This is only a platform to enable exponentially better workflow. By trying to simplify wave down to "email on the left and photos on the right" is a disgrace to their work. Please view the video on http://wave.google.com to see what applications this can really have. This article is extremely misinformed.

[Mark Milian]

Again, the technology is cool. But interface is a mess.

Once they have a design that doesn't look like they unloaded a shotgun onto the page, then this will have a chance of being understood and adopted by the mainstream.

And that needs to happen before they unleash this on the public.

[Luther]

It looks like it will be a total mess.

[Gregg L. DesElms]

Thinking of Wave in terms of "replacing" such as GMAIL (or even email, itself) is just silly. Not every Internet communication needs to be (or even should be) as would be in Wave. Traditional email, at the very least, should (and likely will) never go away. Of this, I think there should be little fear or doubt.

Now, that doesn't mean there won't be a place -- and a potent one, indeed -- in our lives for such as Wave and its ineluctable variants. It, too, will be useful, under the right circumstances. In fact, from my admittedly only-cursory analysis of it to date, I'm thinking that what actually MAY be "replaced" by Wave, as a practical matter, is traditional "chat," as we now know it (though traditional chat, mark my words, will continue to be around for years and years, too, no matter how good Wave ultimately gets).

Regardless, one thing about which we should all be clear in our minds is that we're not talking about the mere replacing of anything, here. Wave, for better or worse, seems very nearly of the nature of paradigm shift... and far be it from me to suggest that that's, necessarily, a bad thing, here.

It does, however, come with pitfalls about which we should all be watchful, if not actually downright concerned. For example, though it's now coming out in articles (and/or rebuttals to such as I am posting here) that it's likely to be user-configurable, initial writings about Wave touted the ability (and represented it as essential to Wave's very way of operating) of all persons in a "wave" (or a thread) to be able to see, in real time, all others' keystrokes, as they type.

Let me repeat the salient words of that, here: AS. THEY. TYPE.

Think about that, please, for just a moment. It's a far larger problem than, perhaps, it initially seems. Like how sausage is made (or, as some joke, like how laws are passed), some things in life may better be left something of a mystery to those who ultimately consume (or are regulated by) them; and, most importantly, solely at the creator's option.

The ultimate impact and meaning to the reader of anything written would be inordinately influenced by said reader's having been a witness to its creation. If one is a thoughtful writer who doesn't just blurt out every wayward thing which flits through one's brain, then one is going to pause to think while one types, and back-up and delete and re-type, and whatever else behind-the-scenes activity goes into what ends-up being the finished written product. If the reader were able to witness what the writer merely paused before writing; or actually did write, but then thought better of and either removed or changed to something else, then the bell of what the reader saw along the way cannot be un-rung; and the reader's ultimate interpretation and understanding of the final written result will be indelibly affected in ways (even if not immediately obvious) more likely than not to be inherently bad for all concerned.

Now, if it's true, as some who challenge such as my assertions, here, are now saying, that the ability of others to view one's keystrokes as one makes them is (or at least will be) user-configurable in the version of Wave which is finally released to the end-user wild, then my concern, at least on this particular privacy-related point, is happily ameliorated.

However, of larger philosophical concern to me is that the creators of Wave apparently believed, even if only briefly, that something as basic as this issue would not be important. What, then (if anything), does that mean we should also be wary of in the realm of personal privacy protections, just generally, for users of this new and groundbreaking product? For what else should we be watching which may, ultimately, negatively impact us because of fundamental, and at least initially seemingly harmless, privacy encroachments...

...encroachments which may not even be recognizable as encroachments to Wave's creators because, perhaps, of their nationality and upbringing (nothing negative, mind you, intended by that wording, I assure).

One potentially troubling impact (at least from the standpoint of Americans, in my opinion) of globalization (which, incidentaly, I'm not fundamentally against, despite how what I'm about to write may make it seem) is how the sensibilities of those non-Americans who create things which all others on the planet end-up using can unintentionally contravene that which Americans hold perhaps nearer and dearer to their hearts than do non-American others. Those who grew up and still live in countries where such things as privacy and freedom of speech are not as absolute and paramount as in the US may or may not necessarily value such rights to the same degree as do Americans; and it sometimes shows in their work.

It has not escaped my notice that the two brothers -- brilliant though they are -- who created and continue to develop Wave were neither born and raised in, nor now live in, the US... and so I fear (and I may be completely wrong about this, I realize... but absent, at this point, any reason not to, I am nevertheless fearing that they) may not place as much of a premium on the notion of absolute privacy (if desired by the end-user of Wave) as do Americans.

Or, who knows, maybe they do. I don't know them, and it's unfair of me to presume, I suppose (or even to suppose, I presume). One way or the other, though, it should be at least a concern to all that the default behavior of Wave seems so inherently and joltingly privacy-denuding.

So, then, again, begged is the question: Of what else (if anything), in Wave, should we who hold inviolate our privacy be wary?

To appeal to (at least thinking) Americans, the makers of Wave need to take steps to ensure that if the end-user wants to protect his/her absolute privacy while using this admittedly exciting and paradigm-shifting new product, it can, via easy configuration settings, be satisfactorily and incontrovertibly achieved at all possible levels, and in all possible ways. Moreover, as it is developed, the makers of Wave might need to realize that they may, because of their nationality and upbringing, not necessarily even recognize what all of those levels and ways might be; and the Americans (or even the non-Americans who at least fully grasp the American viewpoint regarding all this) who work on the development of Wave should ensure that no privacy holes such as I'm discussing here remain anywhere in it when it's finally and fully released into the end-user wild.

Or so it is my opinion... my two cents worth, as it were...

...which my ex-wife, for example, among others, has been known to quickly attest tends to be about all it's usually worth.

__________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California
gregg[at]greggdeselms.com