Comment by edmccaffrey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edmccaffrey | Hacker News Reader

The author thinks that wave is a product, but it is a protocol that they demoed with an application.

It is like email--they are both communication protocols. Why would he compare a protocol to a product that uses a different protocol? It's like comparing bittorrent to Firefox.

The creators rightly dismissed the question of monetization because you don't monetize a protocol, you monetize programs built with it. The demo is just one of many potential products that can be built on it, so they can't answer that question based on it.

They rightly dismissed the competition of Sharepoint and Outlook because that was primarily a presentation of the protocol. The demo seemed like something thrown together to show how communication through the protocol looks like, and not the premier application that they will use it for.

I have an idea for potentially using the protocol for a distributed issue tracker that would work well with a DVCS; the protocol is not limited to Outlook and Sharepoint competition.

This is a dodge. Even TechCrunch was unable to talk about Wave without drawing a direct comparison to FriendFeed, an actual product. Meanwhile, talking about protocols without talking about applications is cart-before-the-horse handwaving.

None of the writers at TweetCrunch seem like creative programmers; they specialize in reporting on actual products, and not underlying protocols, so there isn't anything for them to report. It's not a dodge because there isn't anything to compare; you don't compare a protocol to a product that uses a different one.

I/O is a developer conference; talking about the protocol without an actual product is just fine--the demo was good enough to show developers what basic features they can use for whatever product they can imagine.

That demo just shows what you can do. You can't compare it to any existing product. As terrible as this article is, the author does come to the realization that it will be useful for their actual email and office products, however brushing that question off wasn't arrogant; it was a weak denial--a developer conference isn't the right place to talk about their office products.

The GigaOm article isn't about what you want it to be about, but that doesn't make it a bad article. They write on their terms, not yours. Those terms are: where does Wave fit in with the Google ecosystem? What's likely to happen to it? Is it worth an investment of time an interest?

The thesis of the article is that the Wave pitch is arrogant. The evidence mustered is that Google has a poor track record of weaponizing innovation, and has little to say right now about what they'd actually do with Wave, but is prepared to say that Wave is more important than SharePoint, and maybe SMTP.

I don't have to agree with this thesis to see that it's worth considering.

"The GigaOm article isn't about what you want it to be about. . .Those terms are: where does Wave fit in with the Google ecosystem? What's likely to happen to it? Is it worth an investment of time an interest?"

That's actually exactly what I thought it was about. Your comment, applied to this article, is the perfect explanation of why it is terrible: The presentation isn't about what they want it to be about, but that doesn't make it an arrogant presentation. Google was not doing a product presentation and GigaOm didn't understand it, and got upset when Google dismissed questions irrelevant to what they were presenting.

The GigaOm article is a long whine that they got to see a tech presentation instead of a business presentation. At a developer conference. I'll try to remember this the next time I want to whine about how I got a business presentation instead of a tech presentation at a business conference.

I don't understand how "not about business" equates to "arrogant".

As for SharePoint — is there anything less important than SharePoint? Maybe one of my socks or something. Or one of my less important GitHub projects.

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