Google Wave: Nuff Said.

I’m not about to lie to you. Google Wave gets me so excited that I feel like a schoolgirl. I’ve never even been a schoolgirl before, so that’s an odd feeling. Wave’s like that.

So it’s not difficult to imagine how giddy I was when Mashable posted about Google’s surprise blog update that actually named a date for selective release. It went a little something like this:

In other news: this morning we announced that we plan to start extending the Google Wave preview beyond developers on September 30th. This will take place on wave.google.com rather than the separate “sandbox” instance we are currently using, and we plan to involve about 100,000 users. In addition to the developers already using Wave, we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up on wave.google.com.

This got my heart racing. A couple of months ago, wave.google.com popped up out of the ether, with nothing more than a video and a button to request invite. The Internet imploded in the ruckus and I promptly requested mine, as well as included the lyrics to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (in their entirety) in the comment box as a gift. I also unabashedly pronounced my love of the people at Google for what they’d done over the years. If that sounds odd, it’s because they asked people to include anything they wanted in the form, to include creative ASCII art. For the “Massive Dynamic” sort of company they’ve become, the people working there are still just like us. That’s a big reason I support them the way I do.

The imminent release of Wave is extremely nostalgic. I was in the 8th grade when I signed up for an invite to the (then) mysterious and new GMail. It’s surprised me greatly that people still shy away from the service, usually citing worries about privacy. These same users are usually Hotmail account holders. Ironic? I think it is, at least marginally so, considering these people are saying that they trust Microsoft more with their intimate details than Google, which of course leads to a flame-war that I’m not about to step into.

My point is this:

Google has come a long way since GMail was introduced. My friends who said I was foolish for signing up for a new service that saves and catalogues my data were later eating their words. Over time most of the stigma attached to Google’s operation of GMail has melted away, to be replaced by due respect for a truly fantastic email service. A service that ties its users into dozens of other Google developments by using one common login. A common login that can now double as a verified identity to the world’s largest Web-based presence by linking Knol with your Google Profile. I don’t see Microsoft offering this kind of service. Twitter requires that a user be a bona fide celebrity in order to get an account verified. Google only requires that you’re you.

Wave promises to revamp the way we use the Web in ways previously unexplored. GMail changed the way we email, Wave wants to replace it. That may be a little ambitious, considering huge numbers of people will reenact the shyness period that followed GMail. That’s fine, since there are plenty of other people who want in. So if you suddenly feel an urge to jump out of your chair on September 30th and start dancing, don’t be ashamed. I’ll hopefully be doing it proudly at that very moment.