Google Wave is… something. What it is, exactly, few people have been able to agree on. Google's own PR about Google Wave is a frustratingly imbalanced information overload, their publicity effort centering around an 80 minute video of the developer preview at Google I/O, earlier this year, entirely burying their slick, short product demos.
Apple can routinely, in 80 minutes, tout its sales figures, announce three revolutionary consumer products, demo them, preview yet another devastatingly witty TV commercial starring an affable PC and bemused Mac, and have a surprise musical guest run through a number or two. Even Microsoft's execs can put on a reasonably tight show when announcing new products. So how does Google's new product announcement compare? It's thorough and boring. It's unrehearsed, heavily padded by presentation failures, presenter fumbles, and an excruciatingly long introduction by one of Google's research unit executives.
The Wave video is a fine tech conference presentation. But it's a lousy public product demonstration, and it's the entirety of Google's sales pitch. Sales pitches, product sheets, whitepapers, short demonstrations of single features are all missing from Wave's PR. In their place is a long video of people fumbling with their demo equipment. I watched it in 20 minute chunks, because if this is The Future, The Future is awkward.