Google Wave Keeps Swelling

google wave

How excited are folks about Google’s (GOOG) new Wave communication tool? The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good idea.

According to the Journal, Hagan Blount, a Baltimore-based food blogger, was reliably informed that he was due to get one of the 100,000 chances to test the feature that Google has been handing out. So on Tuesday night, he offered his Wave account up for sale on eBay and went to sleep, figuring he’d check in on the bidders in the morning.

What a difference eight hours make. By the time he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, his account had already garnered 12,000 hits. One buyer offered up $5,000 for the chance to test-run the Wave, and another anonymous “businessman” tentatively offered $27,000. Unfortunately for Blount, he doesn’t own the copyright for the Wave, so eBay invalidated his account. Still, it’s clear that people have a real hunger on for the Wave.

And that got Silicon Alley Insider writer Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry to thinking: What if Google actually charged for the Wave? As Gobry notes, Google will offer the Wave for free, just as it does Google Maps, Gmail, and everything else, just to keep your eyeballs fixed on the ads and to build brand recognition. “But as an exercise, let’s think about how Wave, Inc, and not Google Wave, would pursue revenue,” he writes.

Gobry rules out Google setting up a separate Wave to sell as an internal corporate communication tool, since that entails too much customer support, and Wave’s open-source structure means that someone would inevitably design a better version than the one Google was selling. But selling ads next to users’ Wave communications might work, especially as semantic search improves. Once computers can decipher English well enough to truly understand what you’re writing, they can sell ads next to the subject of your conversations. But it’s not there yet. “With enough data and training, a semantic engine could decipher intent, i.e., whether you’re talking about your trip to Thailand last summer, in which case ads would be useless, or whether you’re setting up a wave to plan a trip to Thailand with your friends, in which case ads for cheap flights and hotels are relevant,” he writes. Google might consider using wave to outclass PayPal and get into the online payment business, Gobry adds.

Finally, it looks as if Google was smart to try to spin out a better version of Gmail. Because here comes IBM (IBM), ready to challenge Gmail in the e-mail business. On Monday, according to Forbes, IBM is expected to announce iNotes, a new Web-based enterprise communication system. “Google has spent the year trying to recoup from repeated outages of Gmail, including its own enterprise email service—the online applications have been unavailable for multi-hour windows three times so far this year,” writes reporter Andy Greenberg. “IBM is hoping to tap into its reputation as a trusted outsourcer to show that it can do better.” (http://www.thebigmoney.com)