Discussions

Discussions » General Discussion
bizmashups

Does Google Wave mean the death of Gmail and Google Docs?

Posted by bizmashups • 6/04/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: Communications, gmail, google, google docs, wave

Last week Google announced their forthcoming service known as Wave to widespread coverage in both the press and blogosphere.

The official google blog (googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/went-walkabout-brought-back-google-wave.htm...)defines a wave as "equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more."

Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

I’m very taken with the big vision that Wave could really become the tool that unifies all your communication and collboration, where you can access your email, your instant messaging, your documents, your social networks, your blog comments, and more.

It's much too soon to really decide anything about Google Wave yet, but does this mean the phasing out Gmail, or phasing Wave-type abilities into Gmail and Google Docs?

Reply

User Comments

  1. dsriharsha
    6/04/09
    dsriharsha
    I am a bit sceptical about the Google Wave.. I have seen the demo and everything and really love it, but I can't even begin to imagine how it would scale.. it is going to be a very difficult job scaling, I guess

    Anyway, Google will probably give out Wave invites very slowly, like they first did with Gmail. More invites will be given out as time passes and the Backend scales enough to accomodate more people..

    Btw.. Google Docs is already like Wave..
    [reply]
  2. trailofpen
    6/04/09
    trailofpen
    It better not end Gmail. I have 5 gmail accounts synced with my Outlook and I will be very sad if they disappear... where else can you get free email accounts with both pop3 and imap enabled...
    [reply]
    1. dsriharsha
      6/04/09
      dsriharsha
      Yahoo? I haven't used Yahoo mail in years so not really sure..

      I don't think Gmail will be phased out.. Wave will be just a new service which can be synced to all the other Google services.. Gmail/Orkut/Blogger etc

Add Your Comment

Login to leave a message.