Is Google Wave Too Complex to Become a Mainstream Web Platform?

eWEEK brought the post to Google's attention Aug.10, looking for comment from Wave creators Lars Rasmussen and Jens Rasmussen, who built the platform in secret in their home country of Australia before unveiling it to a room filled with applause at Google I/O in May. However, Google declined to challenge Dash's points.

That didn't stop some of Dash's readers from rushing to Google's defense. Rlane32 wrote:

Are you seriously saying that Google Wave is going to fail because it is going to be too hard to re-implement? They have already released their protocol implementation as open source. So, the open source community should be able to modify it, clone it, and fork it however they want. They also have a free open source implementation that Google uses as a way to test for interoperability. Google Wave's protocols aren't that terribly difficult. xmpp.org, for instance, lists 24 different server implementations and there are *hundreds* of clients. In comparison to protocols like LDAP, Kerberos, TLS, etc. the protocols Google is using for this aren't even close to difficult.

Filobuster chimed in:

There's no need for developers to use the entire stack of protocols to work with Wave. Most likely people will build extensions (such as bots) that will interface with just one aspect of Wave, through just one protocol. It's great that Google have made it all open and accessible, but that doesn't mean you have to use all of it. Many existing tools from other places can probably be easily ported with javascript and open social. That in itself should create a good ecosystem to start with.

Others agreed with Dash.

"Google Wave is more technology-driven rather than customer-driven so it's hard seeing it going mainstream or extending beyond early adaptors any time soon, if at all," Jalateras wrote.

Venkatbabukr added: "The Web is too big and what we do every day on the Web—not sure how Wave would be able to support all those things easily. Guess it might immediately support e-mail, IM, Orkut, etc. ... but until developers develop supercool and simple-to-use applications on it, people won't be able to embrace it very effectively."

This is all not to say Dash isn't rooting for Google Wave to succeed. He is:

I hope that Wave succeeds, because I love to see ambition and innovation rewarded. But I think it's mostly likely that Wave's success will be in inspiring people to create similarly compelling experiences by adding incremental enhancements to their existing sites. That's how the Web's always advanced in the past.

eWEEK believes Google has too much riding on Wave for it not to succeed, if only as a series of augmentations to Google Apps.

Read more about this topic on TechMeme here.