Email has been around for quite a while now, and it has served its purpose beyond the call of duty. However, its design, having been thought out for the needs at that time, is showing its limitations ever more. So, Google’s vision of how communication should be carried out in the 21st century is very welcome.
Two major limitations of email are that as a thread progresses, the email size continues to grow since each time the previous content is repeated, and that attachments in old emails are made redundant when a new updated email is sent.
The above two issues result in a lot of traffic being generated on the networks carrying the email, and an organizational nightmare for the users.
Google, through Wave, is aiming to solve these issues amongst others by proposing a new system that works more like instant messaging rather than like email. Each conversation is called a wave, and participants to a wave can add new participants at any time. One of the advantages of this approach is that if you get added in the middle of a wave, you will not have to read a jumbled up mess of text to get up to speed with what is being said. Instead you will see an orderly presentation of who said what and in what sequence.
Furthermore, if documents are attached to the wave and updated there will only be one version to view or update, and it is always the latest and most up-to-date version.
Google wave is thus very promising. However, the system can right now only work between Google wave users and so its usefulness is limited.
For Google Wave to be a success, the system must be endorsed by other big players to transform it into an industry standard just like email. Google is making Wave an open source platform so that third party developers can extend the platform. This is definitely a step in the right direction, but more must be done for global acceptance.
[...] This is a pity since Wave was very promising and in my opinion it would have revolutionized the way we communicate by consolidating current methods such as email and instant messaging into one organized instant communication channel. To read in full what I had to say last February about Google wave go and read Google Wave – Email 2.0. [...]