WIRED: Google seems to see Wave as being a replacement for e-mail or instant messaging conversations

PREVIEWING A new piece of software before its time can be the kiss of death. Show any of its rough edges and users will yawn before they have a chance to use it; over-hype it and you risk widespread disappointment when you do launch.

The net industry seems to have learned this lesson. It either works in secret or launches in that middle ground of “beta“ – don’t expect much, but feel free to play around as much as you want.

So it seemed strange this May when Google, the master of “beta” expectation management, chose to demo, but not release, a product called Google Wave. Wave, rumour has it, will “beta” next week, when 100,000 invitations will be sent to those who signed up on the strength of the demo.

Before then, only the 3,000 developers who attended Google’s hardcore I/O conference were allowed in on the service. Even they were warned that Wave was “before beta” and barely usable.

Like anything Google, Wave has generated a huge hype-fest: “Google wave is the future” gets far more hits online than people who have seen the product. Almost inevitably, the final product will be a letdown for some.

I don’t want to spend time on the product itself. I have used the preview, but until we see the final version, it’s almost useless to use that as the basis of a review. Besides, I’ll probably be stricken dead by the non-disclosure- agreement gods if I do.

What’s more interesting for me is the reasoning behind that pre-launch. Google Wave is an attempt to reinvent e-mail and instant messaging, but Google realises, even with its multi-billion dollar might, that it can’t do that on its own. So it has decided to build this new platform using open standards.

While you can’t see Wave at work, coders can see the protocols that Google has written to construct it. It would be almost possible to construct your own Wave clone just from the public documents alone.

Almost certainly, it would be a waste of time.

Writing a copy of Google Wave would be like constructing a meticulous clone of Google Mail or Microsoft Windows. You could try, but you’ll be so continuously behind it would be hard to maintain the motivation.

With Wave, Google is trading on the fact that while people love to be able to connect to a new Google product with their own software and their own websites, they have little interest in recreating Google’s work in order to maintain their independence from Google.

That may well be a good call for Google; it certainly has been in the past, but it is ambitious for Wave – more ambitious even than for search or Gmail.

From the demonstration videos, it really does see this product as being a replacement for e-mail or instant messaging conversations. It wants it to be as ubiquitous as either of those common net uses.

So, it needed to pre-launch, just so other developers outside of Google could get excited and start wiring their software into the Wave “ecosystem”. Also, it needed to build the software that would ensure that it was possible to be truly ubiquitous.

Which brings me to Google’s announcement this week – another pre-launch launch, if you will.

On Tuesday, the company announced a plug-in for Internet Explorer called Chrome Frame. It’s an incredibly cheeky piece of software that allows you to run Google’s own browser, Chrome, inside Microsoft’s browser product.

It works on a per-website basis and, like Flash, websites can specify that they need it. That means the millions of users who don’t want (or don’t know how) to switch from Explorer to another browser can now view websites that are designed only for modern browsers, like Safari, Firefox and Chrome. One of those websites is, of course, that of Google Wave.

There’s not much that Microsoft can do about this. The reason why Google’s plug-in works is because Microsoft, too, likes to provide other companies with the possibility of interlinking and connecting with its software.

So it has deliberately exposed all the underlying machinery that allows Chrome Frame take over control of Explorer.

Such interdependency is exactly how you become irreplaceable in technology.

Indeed, many of the places that can’t switch from Explorer are locked in exactly because they have software that is inextricably tied to Microsoft’s browser and its interfaces. Chrome Frame turns this on its head and means that they can now escape that dependency, one website at a time.

So will Google Wave replace e-mail? I think it’s unlikely.

Ironically, despite all their previews, I think it’s because Google is just too baked into its new product for everyone to really feel comfortable switching.

Even in the headiest days of Microsoft’s near-monopoly or IBM’s near-monopoly before that, there were always some who stood apart. E-mail is just a protocol and, while Wave is built on similarly open protocols, it’s still going to be Google Wave.

We’ll see next week, but my bet is that whatever replaces e-mail isn’t going to be a trademark – or have a launch date.