Microsoft architecture chief: Google Wave 'anti-web'
Email-IM hybrid 'too complicated'
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Microsoft's chief software architect has branded Google's Wave collaboration effort as "anti-web".
Ray Ozzie told the Churchill Club in California last week that Wave violates a principle he currently holds dear - that complexity is the enemy of the web.
Ozzie said the open web relies on open data formats and protocols, not opaque packages and payloads being tunneled across the web - yes, that was Microsoft saying that.
He did not explain exactly how he believed Wave to be complex. Instead he suggested that Wave would rely on open source - because without it, Google's collaboration platform would be too complicated for those outside the company to implement.
"I have nothing but the highest degree of sincere respect for the people who took this on," Ozzie told a Churchill Club dinner event on Thursday evening.
But "if you have something that by its very nature...is very complex with many roles and the way you configure it...then you need open source to have many instances of it because no one will be able to do an independent implementation of it," Ozzie said.
Ozzie, the collaboration pioneer: hopes "we" learn a lot from Wave
He contrasted Wave with Microsoft's work on Mesh, which is currently in beta. This features a framework to store data such as contacts, email, documents, or photos and will synchronize with devices via extensions to RSS- and Atom-based engines.
Mesh is expected as part of Microsoft's Azure cloud later this year.
"Google Wave and Mesh are basically the same thing," Ozzie claimed. "But the nature of Mesh was learning from Groove and saying you are going to do synchronization, you are going to distill it down to simple things that people can do independent implementations of. So it's all based on RSS."
Ozzie is regarded as a pioneer in collaboration. He invented Lotus Notes, that staple of enterprise collaboration now owned by IBM. He also created Groove Networks for people to create online workspaces and share documents. Groove was acquired by Microsoft in 2005 and went on to become Microsoft Office SharePoint Workspace.
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COMMENTS
Wave is like Groove, only perhaps not proprietary
Methinks someone is being more than a little disingenuous. After Ozzie left Lotus, he set up Groove Networks - with a product very similar to Wave, but proprietary and always intended to remain so. It relied on a customised client, used XML over the wire and worked by sending changes (even called the same thing - fairly obviously - deltas) to all connected clients in a session, so you could do collaborative white-boarding and similar things. It was not especially well integrated into the Web and relied on ActiveX. Groove is now, of course, part of Microsoft.
Wave just represents a more recent attempt in the same vein as Groove. It's a lot less anti-web than Groove ever was, and is definitely worth watching.
They are friggin scared
Besides, Google is going to open-source it, Lars mentioned it several times during their developer preview session.
Poor shitware salesperson who earns a pittance ...
The whole m$ product range is crapware, apart from outlook which - security issues aside - was (last time I used it years ago) quite a good business mail and organiser client. I actually miss that one application. Every time I have to use any of the other m$ defaecations I get sick of 'where I can't go today because it just doesn't work properly'. What m$ produce by the boatload is amateur retardware designed for the bunch of idiots who will actually pay money for it and consider it acceptable.
As to the cloud and wave : do you really think I'm stupid enough (after experience with m$ and others) to let you control my e-mail, apps & data ? The only waving I'll be doing is goodbye ! What about my personal information when we know it'll be offshored before you know it (if not already). How do I bring UK data protection to bear here ?
Time to wake up !
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