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Google Wave – A Solar System – A Tsunami

At Stratbeans we make extensive use of google docs for collaborative sharing.

For people who are not aware of google docs, its a online document creation and sharing tool from google. The document google supports are like .doc, .ppt, .xls etc. To know more about it visit http://docs.google.com.

When we first heard about google waves from a twitterized geek, we thought google wave, to be nothing but a taller version and extension of existing google docs.

We were wrong ... we underestimated it.

When we looked at the detail of wave, then we realized that this is not an extension but a product in altogether different dimension.

That brought us to the analogy. Some products are like planets, which fit neatly into an existing solar system. However, then there are products which are like solar system that have other products revolve around its orbit.

Google wave looks to be a 'solar system' where many future and current applications like flickr, chat etc would orbit.

Wave has concepts like Wave, Wavelets, Blips, Robots etc. Those interested can refer to this link http://code.google.com/apis/wave/guide.html

Our feeling is that wave is modestly termed as wave, in fact it has a potential to be a complete tsunami which could very easily wash away many currently flourishing products and applications.

For instance discussion forums as we see them today can potentially change with google wave. Most of the big discussion forums of today are dying under their own weight. After a point it becomes difficult to manage them and its for its users begin to find the content cluttered and repetitive. Google Wave with its 'robots' etc has the potential to redefine discussion forums.

Google has an old habit of offering their services and accesses to a limited number of people. Dont know if they do it to infuse an artificial demand for their products or they have a sound technical reason to do that

Regardless, if you are interested in getting your hands dirty as a developer please visit http://code.google.com/apis/wave