Dec 9, 2009 Posted on Dec 9, 2009 in Google | 1 comment

Google Wave: High Level Thoughts

What is Google Wave (GW)?

Google defined “Wave” as an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. It’s also been described as “swiss army knife” for online services. IMHO, the second description is what Google is after. I see tremendous opportunities in the future of collaboration with Google Wave. However, I am not sure that it is ready yet.

What’s the power of GW? How is it different?

The power of GW is not in the UI design. In fact, the UI is a big challenge that Google is facing currently. However, the real power of GW is in the backend collaboration implementation. GW uses Operational Transformation (OT) technology to provide real-time collaboration with high consistency. In less technical terms, OT enables users to edit or modify the same document, or the same line in the document, at the same time without conflicts.

GW vs. Email
Email is highly limited in terms of group collaboration. For example, you can’t edit your email after you have already sent it. You’ll have to send another email in order to do so. The recipient of the email can’t edit your message either. He has to send a reply back to your message. GW on the other hand allows any of the participants to edit any of the messages being exchanged. In this case, GW is more interactive.

GW vs. IM
IM is highly structured. For example, you send a message then the other person sends a reply back. But you can’t send another message that appears in the middle between your original message and the other person’s reply. While GW allows this structure, it isn’t necessary. It eliminates all these restrictions and allows you to rethink how you would like to collaborate with others. Another aspect is the attachments. IM doesn’t allow attachments to messages. Not only GW allows attachments, but also all collaborators can edit these attachments.

GW vs. Google Docs.
Google Docs provides rich text editing, but it doesn’t allow real-time concurrency. For example, you can’t see if someone else is also editing the same document, or where exactly are they editing unless they save their changes. GW simply provides real-time collaboration along with the rich text editing.

GW in the Industry

Real time collaboration is definitely not a new idea. Others were already working on it before Google. For example, Novell had their own real-time collaboration tools. By the time they were working on it, Google announced GW. So, Novell collaborated with Google on combining both technologies and they developed their own product that uses GW technologies. Their product is named Pulse. Here is a video demonstration.

SAP also had their own take on real-time collaboration. They have implemented 12Sprints that is basically an extension to what GW already provides. 12Sprints is highly focused towards business communication, decision making, …etc. Here is a video demonstration.

Salesforce started riding the wave as well. Nothing significantly different, but it is an interesting use of GW. Here is a video demonstration.

One Responseto “Google Wave: High Level Thoughts”

1. 5 Internet and Technology Trends in 2010 | Impress The Future says:

   December 27, 2009 at 3:22 pm

   [...] There is a vast amount of information generated everyday. We still need to figure out how to build knowledge from all the information available around us. How to collaborate with others around the knowledge that we have? Google Wave is yet another attempt from Google to address the issue, but there are others. [...]

   Reply