Hold That Thought

Yes, I know that in my last post I pretty much tore into Wave, but after a comment by Prof Ben I'm beginning to wonder if I've got it all wrong. The good Prof said:

suppose you have an API that allows for realtime communication between browsers. WHAT can and would you do with it? :-)

Now this got me thinking. In the introductory post to Google Wave, Lars Rasmussen said that Wave consists of three parts:

1. a product (the Wave UI you see and use today)
2. a platform (the extensions that add functionality to the Wave product)
3. a protocol (think: email evolved)

Now, say that I've got it all wrong. Say that Wave's value really is in the protocol, as Prof suggest?

I mean, think about it: Wave as a product is hopeless. It's dead on arrival. (for more on this, read my last post, or this and this and this).

Wave as a platform isn't much better off. It is, after all, building on 1)Wave as a product. Unless some third party uses the API to fundamentally change the way Wave works, or some enterprising group of programmers decide to fork the source code, this take on Wave is pretty much dependent on the first, and so is equally doomed.

(Caveat: there's a possibility, though, that some enterprising developer builds THE webapp of the decade on Wave API, and therefore Wave is saved entirely on the strength of that one webapp and everyone uses Wave because of they just can't live without that app and OMG you just have to try Wave because that one app is so bloody useful can DIE if don't use it!! Alright. You get the idea. I stop.)

But Wave as a protocol is remarkably interesting. With such a protocol, other developers who want to build real-time web applications no longer have to reinvent the wheel. Wave is pretty robust. And even if it's overloaded, as a product, with too many conflicting features, future developers may just pick and choose from Wave's feature-set to offer an easy-to-understand, useful little web-app (and sell it, and make money, and so on so forth).

The best thing about this take, though, is that it does seem aligned with what we know of Google's current Internet strategy. Google is intent on creating more value for Internet users, in so far as to (hopefully) bring more people online, and therefore - in the process - enabling Google to organize more of the world's information.

Wave as a protocol: now that's an idea to think about.

(And how silly of me not to have seen it earlier!)