Google's New Wave

Perhaps stung by complaints that it announced the arrival of its new search engine Bing days before actually letting people use it, or psyched by the enthusiastic reception in the tech press so far, Microsoft (MSFT) sped up its launch date two days early, opening Bing up to the public today instead of Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Google (GOOG) used last week to announce Google Wave, a new service that melds e-mail, instant messaging, online forums, and wikis into a grand messaging service. The concept is a little complicated, and that actual launch date is months away, which leads one to wonder if they bumped up the announcement to steal some of Microsoft's thunder. But it's Google, and they're really excited about this one, so we'll offer all 90 minutes of the company's presentation for you right her and now:

CNet's Matt Asay finds it more than a new approach to online communications; it's a new approach to approaching all online technology. In short, Google asked itself, "What would e-mail look like if we invented it from scratch today?" And Google Wave is the answer. Asay argues that unlike almost ever other tech company, Google isn't wedded to successful products it's rolled out before, and are thus free to demolish everything and start again from scratch.

"There's a very good reason that Google innovated Wave, and not, for example, IBM. Google has no incumbent enterprise products to which it must pay obeisance. Google doesn't even have a built-in background with the desktop that moors its vision of what is possible. Google, in other words, is creating an 'innovator's dilemma' for the incumbent enterprise software vendors, entrapped by their own successful products and the need to appease employees and existing customers."