I was busy at the end of last week so didn't get a chance to look at Google Wave until today. This morning also saw the launch of Microsoft's latest search engine offering, Bing so I had a look at that too, initial thoughts? Looks nice enough, seems to work and is pretty quick but what's new? Wolfram/Alpha's launch may have been a bit of a damp squib, primarily due to the lack of information stored in the database, but at least it was something different. To my mind, Bing just looks like Google in a new Microsoft suit. OK so it has a couple of nice features like related searches appearing on the left-hand side of the page and being able to preview videos in the results page (although this last was a feature of live search anyway and has one, possibly unexpected, drawback in that it allows inappropriate content to be viewed in search results) but looking past these it doesn't really offer anything that can't be done already with Google.
Which brings me back to Google Wave, the video is below so you can have a look at it, I was impressed just after the first 10 minutes. The functionality that is built into Wave make it a real contender to challenge Microsoft's dominance of the instant messaging and webmail markets. Particularly the ease with which files can be shared using Google Wave, it makes live messenger look a bit clunky, the real-time updating of conversations is pretty cool too. I'm aware that there is a lot being said in the blogosphere about Google vs Microsoft and some bloggers have suggested that Wave is just bloatware and the current wave of love (sorry) for Wave is just an example of the blogging world's love for all things web 2.0 and inability to admit that Google is becoming more like Microsoft.
Having seen the video and read the blogs my opinion is that while Wave may not be a Microsoft killer it is food for thought for Redmond. While I'm fully aware that Microsoft is a huge company with vast cash reserves that does not make it immune to failure, look at what happened to IBM in the early 90's, ok, they survived but things were pretty tight for a while. Consumers are already becoming pretty jaded when it comes to Microsoft's policy of testing "in the wild", the much-hyped launch of Vista has been seen as a failure and Windows Mobile may be becoming less popular thanks to the launch of the iPhone and G1. The next 2 years will be interesting ones for Microsoft, I think management have seen a need to evolve, hence the launch of Bing, the rush to get Windows 7 out and the move to web apps in Office 2010. Will Google Wave kill off hotmail and MSN messaging? Will Microsoft come back with something better? What are your thoughts?
Matt.
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