Google Wave is a product that’s trying to do something massive to the way we communicate online. Its stated goal is to be what email might look like if it were invented today. A number of other services are labeled as competitors to Google Wave, including the recently updated Google Docs (which is too new for me to comment on in this article), but I wanted to take a look at which of these services are real competition. Below are the services who show the most promise at becoming the next generation of online communication.
Microsoft Sharepoint
Microsoft Sharepoint is a suite of content management tools to maintain and collaborate on documents. While it was never sold as a replacement to email, it was held up as one of the products Google Wave was meant to compete against. But as Steve Gaitten of Bamboo Nation points out, Wave competes with Outlook, not Sharepoint.
It might be possible for Microsoft to transform Outlook in some significant way that expands it beyond email into some sort of super email client. It might even integrate it into Sharepoint a lot further. The truth is, email is Google Wave’s biggest competition. It might be outdated and rough, but it’s the most popular form of communication on the internet. If anything stands a chance at beating Wave, it’s the service that Wave is trying to beat. If email innovation can keep up with user demand, it might just remain the top dog for another 40 years. If Outlook can maintain the large slice of the pie it has, while innovating on top of email it could still be competing into the future.
Novell Pulse
This is exactly the kind of “competition” Google was hoping for when they built Wave. As I’ve said before, Wave’s only hope of replacing email is federation. Only by giving users the choice of Wave provider will users find one that works for them. Novell Pulse might even become a more loved Wave client, and I think that would actually make Google happy. Personally, I’m eagerly awaiting a Pulse preview account.
This tool was touted as a Google Wave competitor while in Beta (with the code name 12Sprints or Constellation).
The tool turns out to be a collaboration space for making decisions. It’s not a complete replacement for email, but I’m not sure that was ever their intention. Streamwork allows a team to collaborate and add gadgets to enhance the process.
“It was clear we needed to work together,” Meyer said. “We’re excited about what they’re doing, they’re excited about what we’re doing.” Users will be able to share content between the two platforms, he said. - David Meyer, reported by Computer World
It will be interesting to see what sort of integration they build into it.
Much like Streamwork, these tools are not marketed as email replacements, but were bothtouted as Google Wave competitors. What they do is allow users to collaborate on documents in real-time. If these sorts of services were better integrated into email (perhaps using GMail’s new oAuth tools) they might be more likely candidates. Otherwise they are really only competing with Google Docs and others of that kind.
Products such as ccBetty and the others mentioned enhance email. They exist to remove the holes in email by providing additional information, embedded media, faster searching, or simplified discussion. Some work on GMail, others on Outlook, others work outside any email service by CC-ing a special address onto each email you wish to turn into a discussion. The problem with all of these tools as competition for Wave is that the email protocol just doesn’t take these sorts of tools into consideration, so they’re limited by how many services the developers can write for. That is, each service might support Outlook or GMail, but not all the other smaller players in the marketplace. Where Google Wave has this model beat is by including extension support from day one, allowing developers to enhance Wave in whatever ways they can imagine. Any service that federates with Google Wave will also support these extensions, making it a truly open, extensible experience.
EtherPad
This collaboration tool gets its own special crossed out spot because it was one of the strongest, simplest competitors in the collaboration space, but was bought by Google! The developers have obviously since been put to work on Google Docs, as evidenced by the announcement of the recent update.
Facebook.
This one scares me a little. In some ways, Google Wave is the anti-Facebook. Where Wave is built on open technology, uses an open protocol and federates with other services, Facebook is a “walled garden” and keeps users inside their service. Both systems let developers make extensions and apps that use the platform, and Facebook seems to be slowly inching towards including some of the collaboration features that have been missing so far. Facebook has a huge user base, and could easily become some sort of defacto go-to communication platform for the masses. Currently though there are no obvious moves to open up the platform further, making it unlikely to catch on in business, where email still rules.
Twitter (+ Buzz and other Social Public Messaging)
Currently, none of the services in their current form pose a threat to email - they’re too limited with their 140 character limits and lack of in-line collaboration. But Twitter (or a more open version of it at least) is the product I think has the most real chance of beating Google Wave at becoming the communication platform of the future.
A distributed network (integrated with Twitter of course) that updates in real-time, with an API could have many people needing their email less and less. Once you can get updates from your favourite companies and all your friends are on the service, why would you need it? Throw in an extension or two, enhanced private messaging, and you have a very compelling product that could steal users away from email. The platform is so new, no one really knows where it could go in the future, and I suspect it will give Google Wave and traditional email a run for their money. It could be Twitter, or Buzz, Status.Net or a new player we’ve never heard of, but the idea has the strongest traction of any I’ve seen.
Something completely new
So those are my thoughts about Google Wave’s true competition. Of course, a company could come out of the blue with a product so completely new and exciting it amasses a huge audience that completely abandons email. This is the least likely of all I think, as I’ve stated before I think Wave is our best chance at replacing email wholesale. Alternatively, email will be killed by slow changes to the next generation of social communication. The chances of it happening are dependant on the whims of companies who are trying to make a buck, not replace email so I’m not holding my breath. Email will be replaced by something federated, open, extensible and easy to use. I’ve taken my best shot at predicting what it could be.
What are your thoughts? Is Google Wave our best hope, or is there something even more obvious that could take email’s place?
The Google Wave Federation Protocol excited us, because for the first time since email, it provided a way for collaboration systems to cooperate in a non silo’d way . The promise is that each organization can choose what product to use and the communication will flow unimpeded between the different systems, in the same way that people on different email systems can send and receive messages to each other today. This is a collaboration revolution we wanted to be a part of. - “Novell Pulse and Google Wave“ - Google Wave Developer
Blog.
“…developers have asked us a lot for a market place where we’ll help them sell their extensions to our users including a revenue share so we’ll also make some money from it. “I’ll be very surprised if we don’t go down that route.” - Google Wave to have application store | News | TechRadar
UK
This will be a very important development in the success of Wave. The
iPhone has grown enormously by making high quality apps simple to pay
for and receive. The key difference for Wave will be that the protocol
is open for anyone to extend, and the main client (the Google Wave
interface) is web based.
I predict this will mean a lot more extensions will be made open source
or free. Of course it’s highly dependent on the quality and user
experience of the store. If a developer can make an extension open
source, but still make it available in the same marketplace many will
choose to do so.
Keep in mind too, that over time other clients will emerge that will
access the Wave protocol, and it will be interesting to see if the
marketplace will extend to such clients.
I use portable Firefox for browsing at work with a modified user-agent (pretending it’s Internet Explorer, of course!) and Google Wave keeps alerting me the browser is not supported. To bypass this annoying check, go directly to https://wave.google.com/wave/?nouacheck. Of course, some browsers just can’t handle the storm: in my experience so far, Opera 10 fails to load Wave every time with a nasty error. - Fors: Shortcuts and searches in Google Wave.
gxg at FORS covers three things you should know about Wave. We’ve covered Shortcuts and useful searches already, but the information about URLs is important and useful.
One take-away from the section on searches is the reader tip published at Lifehacker about limiting waves to certain languages.
If you’re wondering where to start when you first open Google Wave, try these 11 simple tasks that will give you a feel for the interface and the design decisions that went into it. For example, Tip 7 is:
Creating Folders in Google Wave allows you to create categories for
your Wave documents. This is also useful to clean the Google Wave Inbox
of older Waves and file the Waves documents.
To move a Wave document to a Folder: click on a Wave document and
dragdrop it to the Folder name.
Gina Trapani (who is fast becoming one of the foremost experts on Wave) has collated 14 use cases for Wave that were put forward by Lifehacker readers. Top of the list? Education!
Google Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web. - Google Wave’s About page
This page has some introductory information on Google’s new Wave product. It’s a bit sparse though, and you really can’t get the full effect if you don’t check out the video