Google Wave – thoughts

Posted on May 29, 2009 by ben

First impressions / predictions on Google Wave, Google’s new communication idea/product/protocol/service:

  • because it’s open-source, federated, and follows the same trust patterns as email, it will be successful
  • whatever authentication protocol Google Wave uses will be a significant (if not a crushing) player in the web authentication space, and that’s not a bad thing because it looks like identifiers are email addresses (I’ve made this point before.)
  • the brains of our kids are going to be very differently wired once they learn to use this kind of instant, multi-threaded, collaborative communication. I know I’m going to have a hard time getting used to it, and I can’t imagine my parents dealing with it.

Some questions and further thoughts:

  • Are waves going to have permanent URLs? I hope so. Right now it looks like domain + wave ID, which could be made (maybe already has been made) into a URL with a new wave: protocol. I hope they do a standardized mapping of sorts to http: URLs.
  • Will the authentication protocol allow for direct, unmediated authentication between me and a web service, so that my Wave server doesn’t need to take part in every login I do online? That would be nice for privacy.
  • Oh my goodness JavaScript sandboxing is a really big deal now. It’s really time to read up on OpenSocial.
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  • http://identi.ca/evan Evan Prodromou

    Ben, I can’t seem to find another mention that Google Wave will be Open Source. Can you provide a link for me?

  • http://identi.ca/evan Evan Prodromou

    Ben, I can’t seem to find another mention that Google Wave will be Open Source. Can you provide a link for me?

  • http://saweis.net Steve Weis

    Hey Ben. Thought you might be interested in the draft verification protocol: http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/wave-protocol-verification

  • http://saweis.net Steve Weis

    Hey Ben. Thought you might be interested in the draft verification protocol: http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/wave-protocol-verification

  • http://ben.adida.net ben

    Evan: the video says open-source. Given that it’s a federated architecture, I doubt that Google is going to get into the business of selling software, too.

    Steve: thanks I saw it, though I think that’s not user auth, that’s verifying message content as originating from a given server, right?

    On auth: I assumed that one has to authenticate to different domains… but actually that’s not the case, since my server can vouch for me. So sadly I don’t think this will be a web auth player anytime soon… But of course it should be!

  • http://ben.adida.net ben

    Evan: the video says open-source. Given that it’s a federated architecture, I doubt that Google is going to get into the business of selling software, too.

    Steve: thanks I saw it, though I think that’s not user auth, that’s verifying message content as originating from a given server, right?

    On auth: I assumed that one has to authenticate to different domains… but actually that’s not the case, since my server can vouch for me. So sadly I don’t think this will be a web auth player anytime soon… But of course it should be!