Google Wave

6 December 2009 in Technology Leave a reply

So while I was going through my inbox the other morning, I noticed a friend of mine had sent me an online invitation for the new Google Wave web app. I had remembered hearing a little bit about it back in the spring when it was announced amidst a flurry of hype and chatter. So I accepted the invitation, signed up, and logged in. And at this point I gotta say, I’m fairly impressed though still somewhat skeptical.

Google What?

Google Wave is an online collaboration and communication tool. It was conceived by the same guys who spawned Google Maps, Lars and Jens Rasmussen of Sydney, Australia. When they started the project their underlying premise was a simple one: Email was invented over 40 years ago, so what would it look like if it were invented today? The result is one of the most talked about innovations to hit the web. But before I get into the potential, I thought it would be important to first address, exactly what Google Wave is and where it comes from. To start, Wave can be broken down into three core components: the protocol, the server, and the client. And it’s very important to keep these three distinctions in mind when trying to understand what Google Wave is, and how it works.

The Protocol

Wave is built off of a federated extension to the XMPP protocol using the open Wave Federation Protocol. XMPP (short for Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is an open, XML-based protocol originally aimed at near-real-time, extensible instant messaging (IM) and presence information (e.g., buddy lists), but is now expanded into the broader realm of message oriented middleware. It was developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999. Built to be extensible, the protocol has been extended with features such as Voice over Internet Protocol and file transfer signaling. ^{(source: wikipedia)}

The Server

Servers are viewed as “wave providers.” They’re modified Openfire XMPP servers that can interpret the Wave protocol extensions. One of the key features of Google Wave is that the waves are stored on the server. When they say that the wave protocol is “federated” this means that, while the waves are stored on the server, copies of waves are distributed by the server of the originating user to the servers of all other participants in a particular wave; so all participants have immediate access to up-to-date content – thus playing to the inherent strengths of XMPP. And what makes it just a little bit cooler is that differences in waves are merged back to the wave on the server (much like with version control systems) so that people can access any point in the wave’s history as well.

The Client

This is where most of the hype has been directed up to this point. The Google Wave Client is a fairly sleek and sexy HTML 5.0 application built using the Google Web Toolkit. It speaks the Wave protocol and can interact with Wave servers. To this end of things, it doesn’t take too much effort to create one’s own Wave client. Which is exactly what Google is hoping to see happen. By making the bulk of the project open source, Google is hoping to inevitably make the wave model the “new email.” As developers create and collaborate on the project, Google Wave will start to become more stable and closer to what the users want it to be.

Let’s Talk Features

As I briefly began to touch on earlier, Google Wave is capable of doing some pretty cool things. Here’s a list of just some of the things it can do now (which I feel displays its potential for future development):

• Real-Time: Waves are updated in real-time, meaning you can watch as another person types out their message, character by character
• Playback: Users can actually playback the history of a wave to observe how it reached its current incarnation
• Embeddability: Waves can be embedded into other external locations such as a blog on a website, while also maintaining it’s real-time connection to the wave server
• Extendability: Google Wave can be enhanced by developing different extensions/robots that can perform any number of features within a wave; from things like Twitter and blog updates to translation services and map embedding
• Wiki 2.0: Anybody participating in a wave can edit (or reply to) anything in a wave, regardless of who the original author was

As you can see, with just the current set of features Google Wave shows a great deal of promise for the future in terms of accessibility. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s without flaws. Up to this point I’ve only talked about the innovation and benefits of Google Wave. What are the downsides?

Other Side of the Coin

As with any new technological innovation, success depends highly on the people who use it, what they think of it, and how they use it. When email was first invented it was designed for relaying short, textual-based messages. Now we find that our inboxes are stuffed with forwards from friends, online offers from different websites, and spam. Google’s first hurdle is to change the way people think about digital communication: getting people to switch from a “threaded series of replies” model to a “centralized inline collaboration” model. But after it’s been adopted the next hurdle will be to ensure that it continues to be a tool of productivity rather than a system bloated by spam, one-off IM conversations, and stray documents. Ultimately I foresee each wave user’s experience being self-dictated; it will be whatever they (and those they include) make of it.

The other big concern is the forfeiture of self-editing and privacy. People in a wave can see what is added into wave as it’s being added, in real-time. And while the ability to prevent people from watching you type is possible, the feature is still in it’s early stages and is having the bugs worked out. The idea of having an audience while you type, albeit a digital audience, is enough to make people  reticent to type anything at all. Plus with multiple people typing into a wave at once I feel that following a wave, regardless of how pertinent the information may be, will become a much more strenuous task. Not only that, but once a person is included in a wave, they will be able to see that wave for all time, and playback the history of the wave. Yes, this introduces a level of accountability that has yet to be accomplished with email, but it also brings up interesting concerns of privacy and control of one’s information.

The third, and final, drawback I see to the system is its dependence on the cloud-computing model. The fact that waves need to be hosted on a remote sever is somewhat disheartening. Granted, I don’t own or control the servers that my email is hosted on… but I can download a local copy of my email to my computer. As of right now, there does not appear to be a readily available way to back up a collaborated-on wave short of copying its contents into a document on my computer. Also, if I want, I can write emails without a connection to the internet, save them as local drafts, and send them once I find a connection. But wave depends on having a live connection to the internet in order to use it. Yes, internet access is becoming widely prevalent, but it still stands to reason that the internet has yet to be “everywhere.”

So What You’re Saying Is…

The overall impression I have of Google Wave is that it is a very impressive piece of technology. The people at Google have done an incredible job of really putting the XMPP protocol through it’s paces, and with a bit of refinement I could envision the wave model becoming the de facto standard for online collaboration. However, I don’t foresee Google Wave being the death of email all together. Email has become such an entrenched part of our culture that it’s going to take more than a slick HTML 5.0 web client to pry us away from our inboxes with their folder and tag systems for organization.

The system looks very, very promising. And I think Google has innovated a wonderful piece of technology with Wave. Its overwhelming potential will be put to the test in the hands of developers and their creativity and I look forward to seeing what comes out of it all. By merging email, forums, wikis, and IM into one centralized interface, Google has definitely asked the question: is there a better way to do things? While the answer is a resounding “YES!” only time will tell whether or not Google Wave is the answer to the question, or merely a stepping stone to something even better.

And in case I completely lost you with this article, here’s a fun video by the guys at Epipheo Studios that helps to explain some of the basics of Google Wave. Enjoy!