Google Wave: A beta tester's perspective

Google officially rolled out its 100,000-strong beta test of its Google Wave collaboration/email hybrid product and response was so strong, people posted their invites on eBay and received hundreds of bids to get into the test. Application vendors SAI and Salesforce.com also jumped on the announcement, as they released their individual plans to develop plug-ins for the Wave platform.

Ed Laczynski, CTO of L-Tech, a Google partner, and a beta user of Wave, said in an interview he's impressed with the performance so far.

"The gadgets are really cool, and fact that you can watch people respond in real time is also nice," Laczynski said. "Google borrowed from everything ‘Web 2.0' in Wave, and also solved a big problem with Gmail around collaboration. You just want to communicate, but now you have to pick the medium for different types of communication. Wave let's you get a quick answer without having to choose."

Laczynski said he expects developers to begin right away designing customer support for enterprise users and CRM applications for Wave. He said his company "has gadgets and robots in the works right now for the product." He cautioned that Wave's complexity and multiple use cases might actually prove to be a detriment as in targeting consumers, however.

"It's a complicated product, and it appeals to technical people, but taking it out to consumers, the messaging needs to be more simple," he said. "There is so much that it can do, but past 100,000 users, if you want grandma to use it, Google needs a clear adoption path and to be able to communicate why people would want to use it." 

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