Google Wave, the next evolutionary step for communication

The craze I’m on about is something you might have heard of, “Google Wave”. Now recently, Google hasn’t impressed me due to some issues with products of theirs that involve money, so when I read this blog post last night about whether Google Wave will replace Twitter, I was very skeptical. At the end of it there was a video of the Google IO developer conference.

I tried as hard as I could to hate the bloke running the conference, but I don’t know whether is was the tech he was showing or him, I just couldn’t help but like the whole idea of Wave.

So what does it do? Well, Wave does what Google does best. It takes something that we’re really used to, takes a sideways look at it and proceeds to change it. But it changes it in such a way that makes it new, fun and somehow easier, even though it has a million new features.

Put simply, it makes conversations, plain and simple conversations. It moves away from the conventional method of relay communication that we’re so used to and makes Wave a truely interactive experience, as if you were talking in real life, but with pictures and rich media.

There’s far too much for me to explain what it does in one post (it took Google an hour to explain it), so I’ll leave it to this video to explain:

What I’m really interested in though, is how it’s going to change our lives and is it really a good idea to have one company be able to control a majority of a major communication channel. It’s true that companies like BizStone, who own Twitter own one major communication channel, but if Wave is really set to replace as fundamental and business critical as email, then having one business control all of that communication is a bit scary.

One example is, say they’re hacked. That’s world wide business communications compromised – not good – at all. It’s not just that, but its the fact that Google seems to be gaining more and more personal information about internet users and a business that can see all communications that are going on world wide can then tailor its own products to suit the wants and needs of worldwide consumers in just about anything, thus making unfair competition.

Could Google Wave become a cloud service?

The only way that I could see Google Wave being a fair product to consumers is to be open source and have the technology hosted by a consortium of open developers and running it as a cloud service with users chipping in a bit of idle processing power here and there.

So what’s the verdict? Well I can say that I’m pretty sure that Wave will definitely be the next milestone for Google. Yes, they’ve made great maps applications and a really good email client, but none of them can overshadow their take on the search engine. I think that if there’s any product in Google’s portfolio that is going to get them remembered, other than Google Search, it’s got to be Google Wave.

For anyone interested, there’s an open public beta on the 30th where users can sign up for an account, though only the first 100,000 accounts will be accepted – fingers on the ready people!

Google announce their Chrome OS

In the days of the rumours, some even went so far as to make a Linux flavour that worked with a Mac Style Dock and only performed internet based tasks. The name of it was gOS. The website never made it very clear what the “g” in gOS was meant to stand for until just a tiny bit of disclaimer at the bottom of the website popped up, claiming that the “g” stood for “good”, crushing the rumours.

Back to the real Google OS. They’re are a web based company, so basing the operating system on the internet seems like a very smart move, which does beg the question: what if I’m not connected to the internet? Does the entire system buckle?

A few days after the press release, Google also announced a list of hardware partners who were prepared to make devices that would work with Chrome OS. Among those, was the chip maker ARM, British company who are just about the Intel of mobile computing. A lot of chips that go into mobile devices such as the iPhone are ARM chips. So announcing them as a hardware partner could mean one major thing that tackles the problem of always being connected to the web: an always on internet connection using mobile networks.

Mobile Broadband could be a centrepiece for Chrome OS

Sounds a bit farfetched, yes? Well, not really. ARM have quite a bit of experience in dealing with mobile networks through their devices, so it’s the obvious choice. The only thing that would really hold this back would be the mobile networks themselves, they’d have to jump on the operating system and push it through netbooks and mobile broadband contracts.

What I think is quite interesting about the news is that it’s not a direct competitor to the mainstream operating systems, while at the same time it is. It’s a new take on what an operating system should be, and in doing this, they’re creating an entire market for themselves.

I don’t expect the first version to be very much if I’m honest, although they’ve positioned themselves quite well with their launch date: 1 year after Snow Leopard and Windows 7, meaning they have time to take an innovation and make it their own. Though, saying this there seems to already be confusion in the Google camps as to where their operating system slots into the low end market, Android considered.

Confusion: Android was said to work on Netbooks, too.

When Google initially launched Android, they said that they want it on mobile devices and netbooks, but now they’re saying that Chrome is specifically for netbooks. How does that work? Well maybe Android is for even lower powered netbooks (which I can’t see much use for personally) and Chrome for newer models such as the Asus Shell for example.

I’m quite excited yet sceptical about the development for the system. There’s been reports that they’re working with Adobe and probably implementing their AIR platform into the OS as a primary technology. This means that web developers can make applications for the operating system using web technologies such as HTML and Javascript. The reason I’m slightly sceptical is because powerful as it is, Javascript is not a technology to do a lot of heavy lifting. Maybe they’ll be implementing some soft of way of accessing server-side code into the mix?

Back in April of 2008 I was at the Adobe AIR developer conference in London and Google were there. They demonstrated something to do with Javascript that showed so ways of seriously speeding it up, I can’t really remember the details now, but it all seems to make sense now: Google at the AIR developer conference showing off a Javascript catalyst – they we obviously in serious development of the OS, even back then.

AIR could be a major tech in Chrome OS.

What worries me slightly is that the operating system is going to be free, which is just how a Linux Flavour should be, but how are Google expecting to make money out of this? Their usual method is chucking advertisements into a product, but would they really do that with an operating system? It’d be easy enough given the HTML / Javascript interface.

So my thoughts? I think it’ll bring a lot to the market, I can see it doing well, but I can’t see it growing too fast. Give it about 10 years and I reckon it’ll be in the position Apple’s in now, with Apple having grabbed a 30% market share and forcing Windows down to 60% from just over 90%.

What do you think? Do you think it’ll be a winner, or just another Google product that goes into beta and never makes it out?