Emails to Google Wave - the expected shift

While BING created a much expected hype about way we would look at search engines, Google is all set to redefine the mashup ecosystem.

You might just set aside all you menial mail boxes, and I say this with all due respect for serving the world so sincerely for all these years. It’s time for the tides to change. The web might just be swept away by the giant waves of “Walkabout” or as what is evident as – Google Wave.

Change is good

The world loves a change, especially a change that implies convenience. The mall culture brought convenience into shopping just as multiplexes into movies. We’re about to witness a change in the way written communication is used today. Enter Google Wave!

What is Google Wave?

Google Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web.

In a more logical way Google Wave is a complete package, consisting of e-mail, chat, photos, videos, maps and other utilities which we use on a daily basis across various tools or services. All this blended with a whole new experience in real-time written communication. Google Wave has an API for integration with other applications for further collaboration. (Something on the lines of Twitter API, if you can correlate to tweetdeck. Hundreds of clients exhibiting different UI and features.)

Watch the video above for the developer’s preview of Google Wave.

Impact of Google Wave

How hard is this Wave going to hit the shores of our day to day online activities?

Today emails along with IM’s are the preferred ways of written online communication. We are comfortable with the nuances of current day emails and the way they work. Lars Rasmussen one of the brains behind Google Wave puts it as, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today. Google Wave is our suggestion for how emails could work better”.

The fact that Google Wave incorporates multiple utilities and extensions into one single package will certainly lure people into giving two thumbs up for this move.

Just another day at work

Consider a classic case corporate scenario where you have team members exchanging details of a project over emails and IMs. This could be replaced by Google wave enabling better tracking and quick turnaround of requests. Documents would be shared and edited with utmost ease with everyone in the loop kept aware of the changes. These being few of the advantages extended by Google Wave might just ensure the corporate world switching from widely used email and chat clients to Google Wave. This point is also being upheld in the cnet news review where Stephen Shankland, a senior writer with the company states, “Expect businesses to go through an adjustment period as Wave arrives”.

The Wave rides Microsoft

Microsoft Office is widely used across different organizations, but with Google Wave making the concept of dynamic documents a reality and emails being more interactive has got Microsoft thinking. Unless Microsoft could replace the existing Office suite with some real-time extensions they would be waving goodbye to their wide Office client base in the years to come.

Any developers around?

Google plans to make the code open source. I hear a loud cheer from the developer community somewhere in the distance as this is an opportunity for them to play around with the code and create some fascinating add-ons to Google Wave. Developers can rejoice over some cool wave applications at Wave Sample gallery and check out the technical documentation as well.

High tide or a Low tide?

Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder states in one of his interviews that - “Google Wave will set a new benchmark for Interactivity”. The world awaits this revolution, one that might just change the way we look at internet based communication technologies. All the hype that’s going around is just from a few demos from the creators and some sandbox testing by few developers.

With the kind of spine it has, there is not a speck of doubt that this change will be welcomed with arms wide open, but the question still remains, is it here to stay? Only time will tell the crests and troughs of this Wave.