Google is releasing a new product called Wave soon and it looks to be a very interesting way to communicate on the web (Warning, this is a long video):
This certainly won't replace e-mail, but this will be a great tool to use for communicating in groups.
GJ said about 18 hours later
For those that use it, it will replace email. It looks kind of like a blackberry for the web. The key for me--does it work seamlessly with other users who do not use Wave? Can it interact with traditional email, IM, etc.? (I didn't watch much more than 20 min of this, so maybe they covered that).
Looks neat, but it's not definitely a home run--yet.
Marc said 1 day later
It doesn't look like it integrates with regular e-mail just yet. Integrating with regular IM is practically a given...they have a relatively extensive API, so you can bet that will be developed.
I can see this being extremely popular in the college scene. All of the team projects would benefit greatly from the threadlike e-mails and collaborative document editing.
GJ said 1 day later
It'll be popular with the Facebook crowd, too. :) Business crowd, I'm not sure if this will catch on or not. In order for it to be successful, it'll require a change to the mindset of the average business user in how they approach email. I don't see this necessarily reducing the amount of time people spend in email--and that's one thing that most folks want to see drop.
