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Ray Ozzie Calls Google Wave "Anti-Web"
TropicalCoder writes "Ray Ozzie says that Google Wave is 'anti-Web,' by which he seems to mean that it is too complex for its own good. In the video he complains about its complexity in relation to Microsoft's Live Mesh: 'If you have something, that by its very nature is very complex, with many goals... then you need open source to have many instances of it because nobody will be able to do an independent implementation of it.' That's its weakness to Ozzie, apparently — that this complexity that can only be overcome by open source. While he heaps high praise on the Google team that came up with this, he feels that the advantage of Microsoft's approach is that '...by decomposing things to be simpler, you don't need open source.' The Register's author summarizes it like this: 'In a way, this is classic Microsoft meets what is emerging as classic Google. Microsoft gives you an integrated stack but all the moving parts are anchored on a single company's vision. Google frees you to work out the bits yourself, but you must rely on your own smarts or those of your chosen tools.'"
Microsoft praised on the altar of Slashdot!? Blasphemy!
This just in: Microsoft employee claims that Microsoft tool is the best and their closed-source approach is the only way to go.
Things that people from Microsoft say about both open source and google are often very stupid, and this bit from Mr. Ozzie is no exception.
I have an aversion to video, so unfortunately I cannot comment on the rest.
Juln
So I was wondering who Ray Ozzie is, and how about that, he's a software architect for Microsoft. Of course he's going to praise Microsoft's software, no? Summery seems a little bias, imo.
... beyond flamebait. Is it even worth expelling energy towards a rebuttal to this? It would just be preaching to the choir.
"Engineering. Where the noble, semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream." -Sheldon
Wave is a total ripoff of Sharepoint, which is a ripoff of Notes and other collaboration software.
If Ozzie really wanted to criticize Google, he should have gone after their unoriginality. Then again, such a criticism may bite him back.
I'm not sure what people would expect Microsoft's Chief Software Architect to say - "Gosh, Google sure has cleaned our clock with this one!"? For that matter, If it were an interview with the lead of Google's Wave team, would you expect them to talk about how Microsoft's approach was superior?
But I do feel compelled to point out that, until very recently, Microsoft's entire "web" approach was very anti-web. So much of what they did amounted to basically reducing the web/internet to a delivery vehicle for Windows-bound software. We ran into this a few years back - our university bought into a Windows-based "e-learning system". Problem was, this "e-learning" amounted to downloading some ActiveX-driven applications onto your desktop. I (and probably others) complained to the powers-that-be about this, and their response amounted to "we realized this after-the fact, and yes we basically got snookered".
#DeleteChrome
The basic problem these days is that you have many people who want to have access to a shared document. The solution that Microsoft was pursuing was good, and attempted to fit the RSS model blogs use to push content. But in the end you still have many copies of documents, and you're always trying to keep changes synced across them. This approach breaks down when you have multiple sources of change... conflict resolution will always jump up to bite you.
Google Wave is a brilliant leapfrog over this problem, at the cost of some complexity. They made engineering choices that so far seem to be very pragmatic and practical... and if you don't like them you could always build your own. They actually distribute the changes to all observers, using OT (Operational Transforms) to keep everything synchronized. As a benefit, you can work on only the changes to a document, instead of having to re-scan the whole thing every time something changes, to attempt to work backwards to figure out the changes.
The ambition of Google's approach is backed up with a brilliant exploration of the solution space, and a very good choice of models, both in terms of the open source approach, in their openness with documentation, etc... and their choice of federation as a first class part of the model.
The latest analogy that I came up with is one of a Jet Engine.... instead of working on one charge of fuel/air at a time (one document)... it operates on a stream of fuel and air.... which allows for higher performance (at the cost of some fuel efficiency).
We don't care as much about the computational cycles as we do all the human time this saves by tracking all the changes, and who made them.
Bravo, Google... you've done it again!
Wait! What?! Microsoft is the simpler choice? Microsoft? Simple? What? Come on! Even people who like Microsoft will never claim that Microsoft is the simpler choice, ever. They may like it, but everyone knows Microsoft is complex... Well, everyone except this guy, it seems...
Ford employee says the new BMW M3 is an okay car if all you care about are speed, style, and reliability, but if are cheap and want something to compliment your "awsome mullett" (sic) then a Ford Mustang is really your only choice.
This will become a truism in future times: software is the expression of a social intelligence and the more people are involved, the better that works. FOSS is simply better at solving complex problems (like "how to build an operating system") than closed source development.
Ironically, while Google depends on FOSS for its most innovative attacks on Microsoft (Android, for example, which has leapt over WinCE and Symbian with what appears little effort), Google keeps its most valuable technology (searching) completely closed.
Thus, one can conclude that this is also Google's long term weakness. Microsoft: if you want to beat Google, find a way to develop a completely open search ranking system.
My blog
The bloke responsible for Lotus Notes says something from Google is too complicated? Who's his writer - Randy Newman?
Shhaaaaaaron!
As the guy who designed Lotus Notes, Ray Ozzie has no credit with me about complaining about complexity. What is Lotus Notes? Is it a database? Email system? Application development platform? How about all that and more! A good friend of mine was a Lotus Notes developer back in the day said "Lotus Notes is everything you want and need from now to the end of time, and it's all available to you right now."
That is not the hallmark of simplicity.
I think we're missing the point. This isn't about Google or Microsoft, or even Wave. This is about some guy trying to achieve Jesse James Garrett status by coining an even more annoying buzzword than Web 2.0. Don't let it happen!!
Why can't we just stick with "...considered harmful" and move on, Ozzie? Please??
In Microsoftian terms, open source is evil. And Google has to resort to that "evil" to keep itself going.
I saw the video. Why is this better than a good php web forum software with some Web 2.0 (e.g. JavaScript interactivity) thrown on top? Email will always keep the bulk of messages. And if we were to use chat in a more serious manner, we would get the same result.
What I saw in Google Wave could be implemented using email,p2p chat or forum software.
I suppose I am just not smart enough to see how ingenious Google was with Wave. But what if more than 80% of the users out there are the same? (I am not saying that I am in the top 20% smart people, I am just smart with computers).
In other News, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer issued a joint statement saying "in their independent opinion as leading figures in the software industry, Live Mesh kicks Wave's ass."
They're just angry that Bing sucks. Bing, the decision engine that's gonna finally FUCKING KILL GOOGLE, or maybe not.
Well I see that as a good thing, all too many things these days are thrown on top of HTTP just because its convenient and the web 2.0 devs don't know anything else.
Since this project has the ambitious aim of taking over email I think they should start from scratch with their own protocol, rather than extending XMPP or piggybacking on HTTP, maybe a custom text based protocol with binary on the side for transferring files and the like. Sending stuff in base64 is one of the faults of email and XMPP currently and I think they should make these things as bandwidth efficient as reasonably possible.
What's also missing from Wave is a unified client-server protocol. They want to use HTTP for everything but web-based systems like this are inherently slow and inefficient and force a certain interface on the user. A client-server protocol would be much better
Isn't the fantastic thing about Wave that it _is_ anti-web? I mean, it is distributed and decentralised, which is the antithesis of what the WWW is about.
IMO, moving to such a decentralised internet is critical to the future of the web, which is why I think projects like this and OneSwarm, etc, are so important.
Where in Google's presentation did they say that implementations had to all be open source? They simply said they'd supply some of their own code and the documentation for the protocols to allow other people to implement their solutions. They never said all the other people had to open source their versions.
Moderators should stop posting funny idle.slashdot videos in main site. Whats next, lolcats?
by decomposing things to be simpler, you don't need open source.
Let's see.... you could meet a beautiful girl and fall madly in love and have sex for free for the rest of your life...
Or... you could meet Ray the Pimp and pay $50 bucks for a night with his "best" girl, Grizelda. She even has most of her teeth!
And then you find out at the last minute that she'll sell you condoms for $200 each. No, the one in your wallet is not "compatible".
Insightful and funny are really the same thing, except one has a punch line.
Lotus Notes = Ray Ozzie
if this man is speaking, I am not listening
My god, this guy is the king of complexity. Maybe he's learned something after all these years, if his PR drivel is to be believed.
Notes was a steaming pile. Sure, it did get a lot of things done for a lot of people. But, it did so in a completely proprietary way, at a time when you could have seen that there were potentially simpler ways to do these things.
And I didn't think he had learned much from this experience when he designed Groove.
I'm glad he's finally come around.
Are they even similar? Mesh is a tool for sharing files across multiple machines.....Wave is a tool for communication and collaboration?
For the record, Mesh is a damned fine service; I use it to backup all my critical data over all my machines as well as for it's remote desktop to any of the meshed machines.
throw new NoSignatureException();
The Register is a Rag British Tabloid for IT failures.
ray ozzie tells the world that we should take wave seriously
if ray ozzie had ignored wave, then he would have implicitly communicated it would be safe for everyone else to ignore wave
by throwing a hissy fit over wave, ray ozzie is telling all of us that wave has real potential
google should cut ray ozzie a check for the free PR and advertising
when will people learn that there is no such thing as bad press? all exposure, positive or negative, is good exposure. that's why attempts at censorship often backfire (see: streisand effect)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Show of hands, who the fuck cares what Ray Ozzie thinks?
tasty electronic music vittles
So I was wondering who Ray Ozzie is, and how about that, he's a software architect for Microsoft.
Ray Ozzie is the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft. He replaced Bill Gates as the person who drives Microsoft's technological decisions.
Live Mesh is Ray's brainchild. Why is it important to listen to what Ray says? Because he directs the future of Microsoft's development in the space. He controls billions of Microsoft dollars. The point is that he's not some random Microsoft shill - he's the guy in charge.
An ajax web app that tries to ape a simple desktop app is built with:
HTTP
HTML
CSS
XML
SQL
JavaScript
PHP/Python/Ruby/other scripting language
That's 7 different text-based (aka "simple") languages/syntaxes a developer has to learn just to be able just to get the same basic functionality as a simple desktop application. The current system as it is isn't simple.
I was showing a Linux user Live Mesh today - and I've got to say it's shaping up to be a really impressive 'something'. Not quite sure what it is, but it's impressive. 5 gig syncing across my desktop PC, laptop, home server, work PC, and mobile phone. So it's a cloud storage thingy, I hear you cry. Ah ha, but it also has built-in remote desktop. And you can invite other people to have access to your remotely shared files.
So... it's syncing cloud storage, and a remote control system thrown in. Maybe I don't get its place in the Universe, but there's no denying the technology works well.
This is me commenting on the technology I know about - not used Wave, but it read as a heck of a technology, on paper. I'd be very interested to get my hands on it.
Next story!
Edith Keeler Must Die
Unfortunately, by Ray Ozzie's new standards Sharepoint is Anti-Web...
When Gmail first launched, they did not support POP3 or IMAP. (no other web provider did either, for that matter) Today, they do.
Because this will be an open protocol (GWFP on XMPP), somebody will eventually develop a client protocol, or (preferably) extend the federated protocol to the client level. If it's any good, Google will eventually implement it. Right now, Google is stuck on Web 2.0 and HTML 5. (and cloud computing?) I think they can be broken free from that, it just takes some presure on a case-by-case basis.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I like SVN... but it's primary objects are specific versions of files, it does not deal with the changes between them as a primary object, but a means to get the primary object. When you have multiple authors, it's important to know who made what changes, and exactly what the changes were... the "Google Wave" approach is different in that each and every change is tracked, and those changes can be merged into bigger change sets if required... but the granularity is much finer and the authorship is always known.
It seems like what he is saying is more that it is too complicated, rather than too complex. Complexity - in terms of many interacting agents, the difficulty of predicting emergent behaviors, and the ability to spontaneously form new structures - seems to be the key feature that made the web successful.
Coming from a guy who works at a company that spent years screwing up the web as far as coding standards go and whos new web browser asks you to run their own site in compatibility mode? Right
Im a troll because I disagree with you.
if you take a fine, upstanding citizen, and skewer them mercilessly in the media, they themselves might feel bad, and they themselves might feel like hiding in a cave, and they themselves might not like capitalizing on their new notoriety. but you have just given them a gift regardless of whether they use it or not. they have just been given carte blanche to capitalize on their notoriety
go ahead, pick someone, anyone, who has received horrible negative attention in the media. all of it can result in book deals and television programs and cash. infamy has the same financial effect as fame. it has an inverse MORAL effect, but i'm not talking about how you might be morally impoverished. i'm limiting my words to your financial benefit from exposure, of whatever type of exposure. if you have gained the public's attention, lots of people know you and remember you. this means you can turn heads again in the future. this attention is a form of power, however it is gained
it is such a morally impervious effect that they had to pass laws to prevent serial killers from financially benefitting from their vile crimes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Sam_law
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
.... recursive acronyms:
BING It's Not Google
While I agree with what you say - there is no Open Source requirement - so does the article. I see you are trying to disprove that Open Source is a requirement legally.
If you mean the quote I pasted below, then read it again. He is saying that due to it's complexity it will not be feasible to code one implementation of it. And that means that if company A wants to use it they will need to spend through the nose creating "one implementation" OR use open source so that they don't have to do it all on their own.
"If you have something, that by its very nature is very complex, with many goals... then you need open source to have many instances of it because nobody will be able to do an independent implementation of it."
This is one of the reasons open source exists. It is economical to share the work, but onerous to create software when utilizing one implementation. Since I know nothing of Google Wave or the MS Live Mesh he may have a point or he may just be spewing FUD.
the internet is a series of tubes, like plumbing
and the world wide web is where you get lolcat pictures
please educate yourself before you open your ignorant mouth
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...and why should we care about what he has to say about anything?
Oy Oy Oy
I'm not sure I'm following all the drama here. At issue is which product takes the best approach to solve problem X. Mr Ozzie seems to indicate Google's approach is overly complex to solve said problem, and infers that Microsoft's solution solves the problem with an appropriate level of complexity.
Now, I saw the entire Google Wave presentation, and also did some reading up on LiveMesh, and I'm not convinced they solve the same problem and can be compared fairly. LiveMesh appears to be an attempt to move an individual's content into the cloud (and be able to synchronize one's data to/from the cloud from any capable device). Google Wave on the other hand is really an alternate (more modern) approach to communication between users (with "synchronization" being a byproduct).
Let's put it this way. Significant success of Google Wave effectively replaces SMTP/IMAP/POP/etc on the net (existing open standards), and gives communications technologies a much richer feature set. Significant success of LiveMesh means a your data ends up in the cloud with modern methods to be able to access that data agnostically. Granted, things like MS Exchange get moved into the cloud as well, allowing email (or whatever they'd prefer to call your method of communication), but how does that remove our dependence on antiquated technologies like SMTP?
Both have potential for success, but I see no reason why the two can't co-exist. Personally, I'm more excited about Google Wave, just because it replaces a 40 year old, highly abused open communications standard with something modern, and also open. Microsoft can just go suck it if they think I'm going to move all my personal data into a cloud that they own, maintain, and operate.
I have spent far too much time around here.
Does Ray Ozzie really have the name recognition around here to not note that he works for Microsoft? I could see it for Gates or Ballmer, but it took me a minute to remember who he was, let alone where he works.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Is the wave really that complex? NO, quite the opposite actually, its fundamentally very simple.
Where it gets complex is the implementation, and much like how people coded for Internet explorer and mozilla, you'll be coding for "wave implementation x or y". By that I mean that what we've seen from google is their implementation of the wave. Which doesn't seem complex, depending on how your looking at it.
As a developer coding robots and gadgets (and so forth), it looks quite simple. But its the google implementation of how you will code such things. Obviously there will be wave implementations that are nothing like the google app engine and hence will have their own api's for coding robots and gadgets (and maybe their own form of extensions that arent robots or gadgets).
Secondly, if we're editing a document together (though it is/will be well specified in format) its up to the "client" to display things correctly, and that could be "interesting" (though with the protocol descriptions so far, that may not be a huge problem). Also, theres the idea of "client"... googles is a web one, but it doesnt have to be that way (i would LOVE to see open office or mozilla run with the idea of a "client" based in the binary space).
One thing I think the wave does that corp's have wanted to do for a long long time is move data to the IDC. This is probably the most common thing i've heard of.
As for live mesh, i've read about it, but being a linux boy i cant see anyway of participating. It talks about this that and the other and about being open, yet when Ray talks about it all he starts talking about exchange... is that an open protocol now (aside from what they released to the web a while ago with all those little "we own you clauses")? And what about OOXML doc format, isnt MS Office not even compliant with its own standard?
It sounds interesting (the mesh), but its hard to understand what its trying to achieve more than file syching, and thats nothing new (imho)...
I mean, this guy goes around promoting himself as the next big thing for making a web site that no one's really heard of, and, as Microsoft's "internet genius", he's pretty much sucked. The company is running around in circles, has kinda blown its client. I mean Bill Gates's Active Desktop had more, well originality than anything that's come out of MS since then. At least it was an interesting concept, even if it couldn't quite work. What do we have now? Stuff that's not even really interesting.
This is my sig.
that's the difference between end-users and end-developers
end-users = dumb
end-adv-users = little bit dumb
end-developers = sum of N end-adv-users
developers = sum of N end-developers
thus....it's not just exponential scale....google to m$
You have to understand. Microsoft has no idea what it's supposed to do either. It's just supposed to compete with Wave.
It's different things to different people. And if any of them manage to pony up some cash for it, then Microsoft will make it do what they want it to do.
This is typical. Nearly every application from Internet Explorer to PocketPC started out as a completely non-functional response to a successful competitor, an empty husk with a snazzy name and lots of marketing dollars. Why do you think we're seeing this on Slashdot, really? I mean, you don't find it coincidental that Microsoft has a never-ending stream of new products waiting in the wings, ready to announce mere weeks after any of it's competitors announce something similar?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Dispite his considerable skills, he is a worshipper of the small box desktop computer nuclear family mentality from which he will never excape.
The creation and evolution of the internet and world wide web are as foreign to Ray Ozzie as the internet and the world wide web would be "magic" to a philistine living in the "now" Middle East, in the second century, B.C.
"Philistine" and "Ray Ozzie" are one in the same.
Don't be a, "Ray Ozzie." [This suggest a new perjoretive term to be used to denagrate luddites.]
Live Mesh is supposed to sync everything. Desktops, phones, TVs, and cloud services included. It seems to be part of a strategy that includes .NET/Silverlight.
[yay, buzzwords]
So in Microsoft's perfect world:
The problem with this whole thing, and IMO a huge barrier to adoption, is that I don't want Microsoft to control everything I do on my computer. I want to be able to run my own code, on my own server.
It's hard to recall a more hypocritical statement MS has made. Microsoft has done everything in it's power to subvert the web to it's own proprietary protocols. Let's remember it was Bill Gates in his famous internet memo, we need to extend & embrace users with IE so they are forced to use our own protocols. As for Ozzie it's hard to imagine he invented notes after reading this...!!
Ping!
Who gives a shit what Microsofties say, fuck off!
Bing!
It's not about M$ vs G$. Both are big monsters, both are trying to sell you his 'services'.
Let's no mistake, open source is the punch baloon, here.
The need of a broader use of GPL v3 Affero license is becoming evident, just to stop being used by those big and greedy corporations.
What's in a sig?
or, i think i will. i watched the whole damn video and kept thinking, "yeah, that's what i've been wanting all this time". it won't be for everyone. But for me, it'll be heaven.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
... he was quoted as saying "SHARONNNNNNN!!!!!"
The weakness of Wave is that it's flexible and adaptable and you can do what you want with it, not what Microsoft thinks you should want to do with it.
The vision of a single company with blinders on...pretending it's not trying in vain to copy the innovators.
Bing!
!:@)
Apparently, Google Wave's goal is to be what email would be, if email were designed today, but this line of reasoning leads to realization of one case in which email does something that Google Wave apparently cannot.
If one recipient of an email is reading the email offline, they can write reply to it a queue it up to be sent, and then (assuming that their reply is delivered successfully), they can assume that their reply was received by the other participants on the thread.
However, with Google Wave, it seems that one could receive a message, go offline, compose a reply, go back online to 'send' the reply, and find that there is a merge conflict. (I am assuming that offline reply composition is possible with Google Wave; if not, there's an even bigger failure)
Perhaps merge conflicts after offline replies could be guaranteed to be avoided if all participants in a discussion agree to certain rules (such as always adding replies at the end), but this is not as good as email, because with emails the same guarantee can be had without any assumptions of the users acting in a certain way.
*double-take*
*looks at post title again*
Nice. Pushing the boundaries of off-topicness...
Requiem for the American Dream
Ray Ozzie is still resting on his Lotus Notes laurels. In this press conference, he make the absurd comparison that Groove and Wave are essentially the same thing. And since Groove came before Wave, he is trying to stake claim to this new technology as well. Groove is no where close to Wave. Wave is the first real difference in email systems since the GUI was added.