Google's ambitious Wave project fired up developers at the company's I/O conference, with some comparing the product's impact to the iPhone.
On Thursday at the event, the search giant gave its first demonstration of Google Wave, a bid to redefine the way people communicate on the internet by blending email, instant messaging, file sharing and collaboration software into one service.
Following a session in which developers were given a peek under the hood at the technology and what it might let them do, several were quite impressed and already pondering what Google Wave would allow them to create.
"I haven't been this jazzed since the release of the iPhone," said Michael Rexroad, a software engineer with Cisco's telepresence systems business unit.
Rexroad was referring to the way ideas immediately sprung to his mind as to how to use the technology to create new types of applications, in much the same way Apple's first public demonstration of the iPhone in January 2007 inspired a generation of software developers to start building.
Developer support is crucial to the success of Google Wave. The company released Wave as a developer preview to I/O attendees on Thursday, and the product is still filled with lots of rough edges, bugs and incomplete details.
But the genius behind Google Wave is not in the individual parts, but in the way Google has assembled a set of existing technologies into an attractive platform for developers, said Andreas Schobel, chief technology officer for mobile start-up 3Banana.
Schobel compared Wave to how Google Maps (perhaps not coincidentally developed by the same people behind Google Wave) awoke developers to the possibilities presented by Ajax technologies. These had been around for some time before the Google Maps launch, but had not previously gained as much popularity as some of the core technologies used to build the modern web.
Daniel Jefferies, president of Newmind Group, a Google Apps reseller, is not a developer, but was intrigued by the possibility of using Wave as an internal tool for improving the productivity of his company. Newmind provides consulting services for helping small and medium businesses implement Google Apps inside their groups, and thought he could better manage his team, their tasks, and their relationships with clients with this sort of tool.
Perhaps the most ringing endorsement came from a software engineer employed by one of Google's rivals, who declined to be identified for obvious reasons. "This will revolutionise email," he said.
