Will Google Wave crash on Gist?

It's always a little nerve-wracking to learn that your startup company is suddenly in competition with Google. We've seen this before with AdReady, which last fall got word that the search titan was rolling out a new product for self-service display advertising. And so it was yesterday with Google Wave, the new communications organizer which at first glance looked a bit like Gist.

Just as a refresher, Seattle-based Gist -- which raised $6.75 million from Vulcan Ventures and Foundry Group earlier this month --  is trying to re-invent how people organize information by consoldiating messages that arrive from various channels: email, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

In a blog post yesterday, Google's Lars Rasmussen explained the problem that the company was trying to tackle by asking: "Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?"

Given the potential crossover, I asked Gist's T.A. McCann what he thought of Google Wave.

While McCann called it "truly impressive engineering," he said it is more of a competitor to Microsoft Outlook/Exchange than it is to Gist. In his view, Gist is more focused on organizing content while Google Wave is a way to streamline how people communicate with one another.

"I can see even building some cool extensions for Gist using Wave for 1-1 communications and/or small teams collaborating on an account, all using Gist data," he said.

In fact, McCann -- who previously worked in Microsoft's Exchange Server group -- said that Google Wave is set up to compete with Microsoft's Communications Server product line or even offerings from Cisco. (Cisco is an investor in Gist rival Xobni.) 

The Microsoft and Cisco products, McCann said, blend information from instant messages, email and phone calls in a way that appears to be similar to where Google Wave is headed.

"This is very good news for everyone working in/around the email/communications space and most importantly end-users who have been struggling with the lack of innovation for quite some time," McCann said.  "IM email Wiki type solutions will be very important in the future and the blend of real-time, historical and 'playback' messages will be extremely important."

It is still early days, and Google is looking at ways to develop the offering further so it could expand deeper into the content management side of the business where Gist resides. After all, one could imagine Google developing a way for people to organize all of the communications in a centralized, easy to manage contact list.

That's in Gist's sweet spot. Still, McCann welcomes the opportunity to either partner or compete with Google.

"My general perspective is it is really good in a sense that yet another player is trying to innovate around email and communications technologies as a whole," he said. "...It is always good to have more players in the space, especially smart guys like Google."

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