In a charming 1.5 hour presentation, Google's Lars Rasmussen, creator of Google Maps introduced Google Wave. Wave, called a "personal communication and collaboration platform" is a novel and strong effort to challenge the email status quo that has existed over the past many decades. According to Google, Email is a 4 decade old legacy, which was created when IT technologies were at their infancy, and has survived well past it days. Wave is an attempt at what communication and collaboration should be today, knowing what we know in 2009, and with the technological tools that we have. 

The mention of "communication and collaboration" has brought a wave of comparisons from those who love to pit Google against Microsoft, and would love to see Microsoft resting in its grave. For our purposes, the relevant comparison is Google Wave vs. Microsoft SharePoint, MS's much lauded collaboration platform.

Wave, which looks like an email inbox at first sight, is indeed a totally new approach to communication and collaboration. It brings a strange mix of "push" and "pull" communication and collaboration. The boundaries between mail, instant messaging and document collaboration has been blurred. What looks like a list of messages in an inbox, is really a list of common workspaces, which exists simultenously in the inboxes of all of the workspace participants, who can collaborate and collaborate in real time in a variety of ways. 

I know the above description sounds a little weird, which is because Wave is every bit as weird as it sound. Which brings me to the comparison between SharePoint and Google Wave as a business collaboration platform. Google Wave does mark is indeed a paradigm shift, it is certainly to early to say how well it will do in the business collaboration market, and what kinds of usage behaviours users will actually settle into. Google Wave appears at first viewing to be highly unstructured and cluttered, not ideal for business collaboration situations, which calls for a degree of structure and control. SharePoint on the other hand is an epitome of structure, and hence suitable for large, mechanistic organizations. 

So, in conclusion, I dont think Wave is going to challenge SharePoint anytime soon. Although consumer markets jump at every new innovation, business markets are known to be cautious and drag their feet.   

What about SMBs which have been longing for a light weight and nimble SharePoint alternative? Sharepoint alternatives from vendors like HyperOffice remain the best bet.