We like most people have been impressed with what we've seen of the hugely ambitious Google Wave product, platform and protocol. It appears to offer a revolutionary medium for messaging based on a simple model; the hosted conversation object. The object, or wave, is centralised, stable, constant and real-time in a way that email or IM are not, growing and branching over a controllable timeline. Despite its apparent brilliance however, Google Wave faces many obstacles on the road ubiquity. We feel these obstacles present opportunities for Microsoft and its partners to take up the challenge.
Obstacle 1: Mixed metaphors
Many of us work, communicate and collaborate with people who are far less confident and trusting of revolutionary mediums than ourselves. They use email, they use server and web based document “libraries”, these use Word and Outlook because they understand these tools’ metaphors and feel in control. As Lars Rasmussen states at the start of the Wave presentation, email metaphorically mimics postal mail. Email is universally used and persists because of this; the familiar paradigm imbues understanding in its users and underpins their sense of control. Word mimics paper, printing and photocopying, Windows and SharePoint your desktop, filling cabinets, phone books and so on. All things we can effortlessly master in the physical world and thus feel ready to master in the technological.
In fact almost everything we create in our technological reality mimics our physical world in some way. Waves are conversations between people, living on a server – “hosted conversations” as Jens Rasmussen describes them. Taking that metaphor too far from its real-world origins may threaten Wave, the platform’s, ability to break through and command the main stream. The first opportunity for Google’s competitors is to occupy the central meaning and simplify the adoption process. Abstracting control away from the existing email user through terminology (waves, wavelets, blips, robots, gadgets etc), complexity, features and extensions will surely impede global adoption.
Opportunity 1: Stick to the central metaphor
The opportunity for Microsoft and others is to take the essence of this great idea, use the Wave protocol perhaps, and build a simple but better alternative to email; an alternative that anybody can understand and distinguish as such. The average user is conservative as is the enterprise IT buyer; hosted or online conversations sound simple, and could propel us out of the email age if sold successfully to the masses.
Obstacle 2: Browser bias
Much has been made of the richness displayed by Google Wave given its HTML5 browser based nature. Whilst the apparent richness is a great achievement, a web page in a browser is still something that we use when a more enduring alternative is not available. Browsers are flexible, simple, run everywhere and allow applications to be accessed globally in an instant, but give a user a solid, slick, desktop client and they will naturally feel more at ease.
Crucially when it comes to writing and content creation, the reliability, solidity and off-line workability of desktop applications make them much more conducive to spending long hours typing and crafting messages.
Opportunity 2: Leverage the rich desktop, content production, messaging and server ecosystem
Some have stated that the need to support incumbent enterprise software is why Microsoft, Oracle and IBM have failed thus far to come up with this type of revolutionary software. Whilst the Googles of this world are clearly leading the charge in ideas, leveraging the flexibility of the browser based model, the mature desktop installed based that Microsoft enjoys actually provides an advantage. Outlook and Exchange are the de facto messaging standards for business, what better platform does any vendor have to build a true replacement for email? The browser can take Wave to a global audience, but it is business, as it always has done, that can accelerate and make the change permanent.
Obstacle 3: Content creation afterthought
What we’ve seen so far of Wave does not indicate that the problems we all face producing content collaboratively will be solved. The presentation proposed that waves can be documents and form the basis for collaborative content creation. Selling Wave as a content collaboration and version management system (perhaps competing with the likes of SharePoint) seems to be an afterthought and another example of mixing metaphors.
Opportunity 3: Build on Wave’s integration of content and communication
We’re not saying that SharePoint successfully meets the collaboration challenge, or even goes close. It struggles; clunky WebDAV, inconsistent desktop integration and most of all minimal connection with the content itself. The key to collaboration is the kind of side by side communication and content creation, change and merge we see in Wave - but - inside a fully fledged word processor, on top of a rock solid document management platform. Deliver that and you would save untold billions of lost hours, and once again nobody other than Microsoft has the penetration across as many of these fields.
New horizons
Wave the product and platform, like its namesake, is potentially immensely powerful but has multiple personalities. It looks tailor made for the technologically minded, for those of us who write wikis, blogs, who tweet and mash things up. However its complexity, browser bias and content limitations may limit its ultimate success. The concepts and ideas behind it are brilliant, but can also provide the inspiration the Microsoft world needs to push forward. Wave should open our eyes and make us strive for new levels of seamless, connected, stable and integrated collaboration and communication.
