Google Waves on the Horizon

As a web developer I love keeping a keen eye on upcoming technologies and products. One of these hot items is Google Wave, brought to you by the brains behind Google Maps (Jens and Lars Rasmussen). Google Wave hopes to revolutionise the way we communicate by building on the past 40 years of phones, mobiles, sms, email, instant messaging right through to the latest Web 2.0 technologies and products sites such as Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flikr, Digg, Google Docs etc.

The concept is simple. The conversation happens in one central location online and can be accessed through any modern HTML 5 capable web browser (currently Safari, Chrome or Firefox). I see no reason why iPhones, Blackberries and Android phones can’t get in on the action too. Inevitably we’ll see ways for these devices to connect to and contribute to the wave, from anywherre in the world. With Google Wave participants can post messages like MSN messenger or email, upload photos like Flikr, and comment on others work like blogs. The cool thing is that you can single out part of a message to comment on, and event post a comment right next to it. Pictures say a thousand words, so why not chuck a picture in the Wave conversation instead. Anything is possible. One of the cool features is that you can use the Wave like a time machine. You can skip back and forward through time, watching the conversation evolve before your eyes, gaining an appreciation of what lead people to come to the conclusions they did etc.

Like all good Google products and services Google Wave will have an excellent API for developers to hook into. So no doubt in the future we’ll see developers coming up with some mind-numbing products and services for Google Wave. Who knows, I might even get in on the action. I’ve got a few ideas rattling around in my head of what might work well combined with Google Wave.

Google have have taken an interesting direction in their development of some of their more recent projects such as Google Wave and their Google Chrome Operating System (even their browser, Google Chrome). They have released preview samples to the development community very early in order to get feedback, squash bugs and get an overall feel in which direction users want to see things head. It’s a little risky cause they could get a bad reputation for themselves if they release a product that was too unstable, or way off the mark. Fortunately Google are good in engaging with the community and implementing suggestions before things get out of control. They’ve also posted reasonable warnings on their product pages to let users know what they’re getting into, especially this early in development.

I think it’s paying off for them though. It’s building quiet excitement amongst developers and even the larger web community. This in turn fuels ideas and prompts developers to jump on board, giving the new product a better shot at widespread adoption. Look what it’s done for Facebook and it’s apps, or the App Store in iTunes, Google Gadgets etc. Get the platform right, provide developers with good documentation and services to work with and sit back and watch what happens. The platform and it’s applications fuels growth in users, which in turn provides developers with more motivation to develop apps and get on the band wagon (also known as the “network effect“).

Bring on Wave. It’s shaping up to be one awesome ride.

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