Google Wave: Few Thoughts

Google Wave, Google’s hot collaboration and communication platform, is rolling out at a snail’s pace. After a long wait, I got my invite and I can now wave. In the last ten days, we have seen too many articles in the blogosphere on the topic and we also saw an explosion of posts on Google Wave here at Cloud Ave. I thought I will add to the echo chamber with my own views after using (actually, after just looking at) Google Wave for few days. 

• First, and foremost, I want to let Google know that I didn’t appreciate the delay in sending me the invite . Any new product should reach my inbox before it is even conceived.
• This is a great platform as well as an app. This is going to change the way we communicate and collaborate. Especially, this is going to be a boon for businesses that are moving to clouds with a hope for better collaboration. In fact, this is how a collaboration tool should have been in the first iteration itself. However, don’t buy into the hype that it revolutionizes the way we collaborate and communicate. It is just a great packaging of different tools.
• Definitely very alpha-ish but the speed is not all that abysmal like how few other bloggers complained but it needs further improvement.
• If Google Wave flops big time, I will squarely put the blame on the way Google has rolled out the product. First, they are only inviting a very limited number of people. Second, they only gave 8 invites to the users and there is no way this is enough to make Google Wave an effective communication and collaboration platform. Finally, some of them didn’t even get the wave that allowed them to invite others (including me). Google Wave is a piece of shit if there are no contacts to communicate or collaborate. When a new product can be meaningful ONLY through network effects, it makes no sense to do a limited roll out. I seriously don’t know what to do with Google Wave till I could add people with whom I communicate and collaborate. In the case of Gmail, we could, at least, send email to friends, colleagues and family using email through other email providers. Since Google Wave is a completely new platform, we are out of luck with that option too.
• Continuing on the earlier point, there should, at least, a way for me to send a “one way wave” to people with email addresses. It could help people like me without anyone to wave to.
• I like the idea of playback. It is going to be a very handy feature for many of us.
• I am still confused about installing extensions. It could have been a bit more straight forward. Somebody help me

Well, these are some of my initial thoughts and, hopefully, I get to really use this platform for communicating with friends and family. I might be able to better appreciate it then.