I’ve been granted access to Google Wave for a bit less than a day now, and from my limited time with it I can say the following:
- It feels much more like an application than a web page. This is contrary to most other ‘apps’ by Google, including Google Docs, Maps, GMail, Reader etc. where I’ve always felt like trapped in a glorified web page. This is, most certainly, in part due to the use of GWT and the more refined design in Wave (compared to the stark, simplistic design found in other Google apps/pages.
- Nevertheless, parts of it are relatively slow. This could very easily be attributed (to a large extent) to my connection — I’m in London for a few days and the connection here is much slower than the one back home. It’s still fun to use though, just not as snappy as I’d like it to be. Clearly this is still ‘work in progress’.
- It’s clearer than it ever was that from a usability standpoint it needs to improve. It’s already very good, but there’s definitely room for improvement. Some people have voiced concerns (in a Google Wave no less) regarding its ease of use — I had no problems whatsoever, and I find the design much better than most Google ‘apps’, but then again I probably wouldn’t have any problems anyway. It’ll be interesting to see other people/companies providing better interfaces for Wave in the future; think Apple Wave, 80% of the usability with 10% of the clutter =)
- I’m also very curious to see how the Google people are going to push this; Wave is not going to take off on the Internet as a general email/IM replacement (but it may take off within Intranets or with communities making use of proprietary Google services) until it gets adopted as a standard — that is until other providers start deploying ‘Wave’ services and interaction between them is assured. If Google achieves in making it a standard, it can most certainly replace both e-mail and IM in one fell swoop.
I wish I had more time to play around with Wave right now. In any case, I have a feeling I’m going to be writing more about Wave in the future, so stay tuned.