Only Google could have built Wave; I know, I tried.

Google Wave is the talk of the town today, and for good reason. It’s a radically smarter way of structuring personal information management and collaboration. But the most interesting part of the product might be that only Google could have built it. And I say this from first hand experience — because I tried.

Six years ago, I came up with an interesting idea: those threads in email should be shareable containers. They shouldn’t just group emails, they should group docs, live chats, photos, calendar items, etc, and each should be collaboratively shareable and editable in real time by everyone involved in the conversation. All stored, accessed, and edited in the web browser. Sound familiar?

I actually built an interactive flash prototype (slide show of it embedded below) and I spent a few months showing it around feeling out interest from investors. Unanimously, everyone thought it was a great idea and said they’d love to use the product.

But there was a problem. Actually several:

1. It’s a huge project: 2003 was pre-google docs, pre-gmail, pre-most web apps. Even today though, the size and scale of building ALL of these apps and integrating them in a web based system necessitated 100s of developers and likely $10s of millions of development dollars. Especially in 2003.
2. Chicken and the egg: What I designed was actually backwards compatible with normal email protocols and file system management. Still, to really use the value-added functionality everyone needed to be using the system. And given the huge infrastructure and raw numbers of different technologies that it would be replacing, the cost and scale of convincing millions to be the first jumpers was an enormous barrier.
3. Browser / technology limitations: In 2003 Ajax was barely possible in most browsers. Fast forward to 2009 and there are still major limitations in browsers that obstruct some key functionality needed for this type of application.
4. People don’t pay for email: Well businesses do, but the real point is that large Internet companies (Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft) give away web based email and collaboration products for free to most consumers. For companies with other substantive income streams that’s fine. But for a start-up, that’s a major barrier to large scale paid adoption, which would have been key for a project of this scale.

If you see where I’m going with this, each of the challenges above represented potentially game-stopping obstructions to building and successfully running a start-up business built around this product. But the beauty of Google circa 2009 is that they literally have built in solutions for each problem.

Google not only has the financial resources and might to build something on this scale, and give it away for free, but it also has the entire Google Apps code base to build it on. Of equal importance, Google has the clout and control over browser development to actually change the standards (which they intend to do with HTML5 to support the technologies needed to build this product).

Perhaps most important of all though, Google has the attention (and an existing user-base) of billions of people - enough that they might actually be able to pull off the greatest chicken-and-egg product problem that has ever existed.

One way or another though, I applaud them for taking this enormous and needed step towards a much smarter information management design. Despite the value of the product, and the resources behind them, the road ahead will not be easy. But if anyone can drive it, it’s them.