The Backlash Against Google Wave

It’s been called ‘arrogant‘, ‘terrifying‘ and ‘bloatware‘, not quite the reaction I think Google was expecting when they launched their newest product Wave this week.

Wednesday saw two major announcements that were supposed to be of ‘game-changing’ proportion. One was Bing from Microsoft. The other, announced almost simultaneously, was Google’s new open source platform, Wave.

Wave is a bit hard to describe. The creators (Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon) call it “E-mail if it were designed today”. Basically they take instant messaging, document-sharing, email, micro-messaging, screen-sharing and mash it all up into one real-time jam of information overload that you can pause and rewind like Tivo. Jordon Golson of GigaOm is far less kind:

Google has a long history of launching or buying projects, only to get bored and abandon them months or years later. With Wave, as with so many Google projects, the company seems to be flinging things against the wall to see what sticks. No real thought has been given to its future beyond, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” When asked about marketing Wave during the launch Q&A, the Google reps said “We really haven’t thought about that too much.” What about advertising? “We haven’t thought about that yet.” What about competition? “It’s not something we really thought a lot about.” So what have the Googlers thought about?

Om himself was a bit more reasonable in his assessment…

My biggest question about Google Wave is how the company is going to bring about a behavior change and find viral growth in order for it to become the standard Google wants it to become. The company wants it to be an open protocol so that people can build their own Waves and at the same time collaborate and federate. No one doubts the audacity of the idea, but for a project that has been a few years in the making, one would surely like to get some specifics.

These are all valid questions. It seems like while, Microsoft attempts to nip at Google’s heels in search, Google is attempting to lift up the whole internet on it’s shoulders and basically change everything from the way we communicate to our behaviors?

Of course, I have to point out that all this real-time communication stuff only matters to the fraction of people on the planet with good bandwidth. Here in Uganda, I’m so glad when an email actually makes it out of the queue that I don’t even bother to think about ‘rewinding’ conversations and dragging and dropping video! In all seriousness, it’s this reduction in basic utility for all users that worries me. Most Google’ products are by-in-large accessible no matter what kind of computer you’re on (except maybe Google Earth). With Wave they seem to be going down a path that might be a little more exclusive in nature. Not a deal-breaker but a concern none-the-less.

Harry McCraken calls it bloatware “less an example of Google-esque minimalism and more like a Microsoft app that’s been through a few versions and is shoehorning stuff in.”

Then there’s the crowd who claim it looks and feels too much like FriendFeed (a web start-up that was founded by ex-Googlers). Which I kind of have to laugh it because everything in the past year, according to them, has looked like FriendFeed (Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, my dinner). Sure there are similarities, but that’s like complaining about Hotmail inboxes looking like Yahoo inboxes or Bing Search looking like Google Search. It’s probablly true, and?

Right now Wave is closed for developers only, it won’t upon up to the public for a few months. I’d like to try it out but the only thing the bandwidth here alows for in real-time is frustration.