Google Wave, Google’s newfangled collaboration and communication application, has fans that insist it’s a game-changer and detractors that insist it will fizzle out faster than New Coke.
What exactly is Google Wave? On the screen, it looks a fairly standard email inbox, but it fuses email, instant messaging and wiki-esque collaboration. Communication between collaborators happens in real time and with total transparency. For example, if you’re using Google Wave to jointly edit a document with others, you can see their changes as they type.
Online tech talking head Steve Rubel says, “It’s slick to be sure. However, what I keep asking myself is this: what problem does it solve?” Answering this question, a columnist from TechCrunch offers the following:
Brainstorming, early concept creation and discussion is what I see Google Wave being used for extensively in the near future. It can also serve as a multi-user note-taking platform for meetings and sessions in your company or university.
So is Google Wave the wave of the future? Will this multifaceted application kill wikis, email and instant messaging applications? Probably not anytime soon. And Google is being somewhat stingy with invitations to the trial version, which may dampen participation and hurt its chances for fast proliferation. Google Wave may turn out to be a tsunami, but for now it’s still just a ripple.