GOOGLE RELEASES THE WAVE

With the release of the Google Wave platform now, Google can no longer hide the fact that for the first time it is taking Microsoft head on in the latter’s supposed domain, that of Operating System. It’s only that Google is doing it in another way, and in style. In the case of Microsoft, the hardware is the base of the OS and most things depend on the kind of 'rig' that you have. This is not so in the case of Google whose 'OS' rests on the web. What this means is that whoever has Internet access can access the Google Wave.

What’s interesting is that with this OS on the web theory, it becomes less and less important what’s the actual OS you use. With smartphones that now come will full-blooded web browsers, the actual OS is fast losing ground. This is not helped by the fact that new Operating Systems (point one big accusing finger at Windows Vista) demand an upgrade in hardware, an upgrade which invariably is costly.

With the current popularity of netbooks, the proliferation of Wi-Fi access and the drop in broadband cost worldwide, it is not a brainer that the 'web; is set for a massive growth. As things stand, Google is going to dominate this growth just as much as the Microsoft dominated the first generation of hardware computing which was hardware oriented. Another overlooked ace in Google's sleeve is the default search engine in the Mozilla Firefox browser, which is growing at an alarming rate in terms of market share. On the other hand Microsoft's Internet Explorer is declining at a rate that experts believe it will lose its majority and go below 50% of the market by May 2011.

Now that Google has released the Wave application it all makes sense now the never ending rumours of Google intending to purchase Twitter never came to fruition. Now that there is a social networking and instant messaging component, Twitter suddenly seem irrelevant and in a flash Facebook now has real competition from a giant that has unlimited resources at its disposal.

With Microsoft's Bing in mind, what I find interesting is that each company is encroaching into the other's traditional domain. For example, in Bing Microsoft is eating into search technology which is traditionally Google's territory, followed by Yahoo and Microsoft in that order. On the other hand, Wave promises to bring an OS on the web, albeit a fast one.

I have always wanted a situation where I can have all my Facebook and MySpace friends, fellow Twitters, GTalk, Yahoo Messenger and AIM contacts on one page, just like the way Pidgin tries to do. If Wave can do that, and then add the powerful ingredient of email to the whole mix, then this is the product for me. Imagine, writing a blog and in a blast immediately everyone on your group is alerted, then the exchange of information is really going to be turned on its head.