Google’s colossal ambition is tough to question, as is the company s ability to execute. Remember Gmail? With AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail, who needs another web email account? About 146 million people, apparently. Yet Wave is massive. It’s email, IM, social networking, file sharing, entertainment. To hear it described, it is the internet. In one application. To rule them all.
Dan Shust prepares us for Google Wave in this article posted on Ad Age yesterday. Today is the day Google sends out 100,000 invites to the beta. Assuming the internet as we know it is still here tomorrow, we could soon see Wave’s potential rise to the surface. Shust considers whether the other wonders of the net YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook need to be scared. It could be that Wave simply facilitates sharing through them, helping them rather than replacing them. Whatever the final outcome, he thinks marketers should start taking note of what the platform promises to do.
Shust’s article includes a video of Google’s Wave presentation in its entirety. If you have an hour and a half to spare, and you haven’t been invited to the beta, there may be no better way to see it in action. Read and watch at Ad Age.