Internet's e-mail age is over
wave gently
...wave gently approaches us with the definitive news. I mean Google wave indeed. And it's damn good news. Sorry for sounding so noble, but I'm trully impressed. Not primarily because of the technology itself. It's more a combination of various bits that were here before, eventhough it is geniously assembled. But bloody hell it's wide open! It couldn't actually be more open :D It's open with it's APIs, it's got an open protocol for federation and it is opensource. Okay, you think I'm crazy...
Let me predict that not in more than two or three years, you'll be wondering whether you still need that old fashion electronic mailbox.
Why? Because you'll change the way you communicate on-line. It started slowly with google docs, and the perfection of gmail, google also got youtube, or built picasaweb, recently orkut is gaining attention so finally google is an on-line communication solution. It's actually not just google. Other companies are focusinng their efforts to move on-line, like Microsoft with it's Onenote or Sharepoint or generally the Live platform. IBM bring LotusLive (Bluehouse). Imagine we would start living the way M$ wants, just because there was no better alternative - ugh.
I keep asking myself if the openness was the only choice for google to keep it's primacy on the web. I have a feeling they came a little late with wave which could knock them down soon. With opening up like a naked photon in open space they pretty much stole the wind out of competitors' sails. Would you call this dumping? I would, but I love it :D It's a tough world.
Do we - like normal people - have anything to loose in this process? When two fight the third is usually laughing. Competition is certainly good for consumers. But is it just this market price we're talking about?
What about privacy? As with any on-line business you yourself decide how much you give away. If it only was not so tempting :o) As google gives the code away for free, there's no problem to set up your own servers, thousands of them as it is with mail servers, so this risk may become distributed and of lesser importance. Commercial products also let you keep your data if you can afford it though. Don't forget the cumulated cost of hardware, space, energy, connectivity. Then if you run your own servers, the quality will hardly compete with professional service.
Other problem I can see is dependency. We are once again deepening our addiction to the internet. Today, you probably still have your documents on your PC, you may keep your e-mails off-line. With the new era all is moving out there, but as the developers of wave funily pointed out, they still haven't figured out how to transfer the data without connectivity :D so once the cable is cut, you're left alone to play some sudoku (paper and pen). Could this be a risk? Who on earth would want to cut you off the Internet? mm... Google's approach is decentralized. Again if it turns out well, we can end up with diverse network of providers and own servers that would lower the impact of such a trouble. Even if the whole google ceased to exist (the end of world like) you'd still be able to restore some communication provisionally and keep on moving. Not likely with the other guys.
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