Перемовини про Вейв-марафон Київ-Сидней: elGephest,  Ларс Расмуссен та перекладач


Продовження інтерв’ю, що відбулося в Хвилі Спроси у Ларса Расмуссена («батька» Google Wave).
Російський переклад можна прочитати тут: Інтерв’ю з Ларсом Расмуссеном, частина 2 (переклад)

Google Chrome is very innovative and has HTML5 draft support which indicates that Google is not satisfied with the current web standards. Based on this question: How Google and you would like to create the Web (to alter it or recreate it) if it doesn’t need to thinking about backward compatibility with current sites and software.

Well first off we’d never sacrifice backwards compatibility! The #1 best thing about the web is the mass of information available and you need backwards compatibility for that :)
We do think that more and more applications and services will start living on the web, and be as rich or richer than those traditionally found with native applications on desktop computers. The Web is the OS in our opinion. Web, or cloud-based, computing has so much more potential than services limited to just a single computer…

Idea of a Wave was born as a continuation of concepts SemanticWeb or is it something else?

I don’t believe it is. We do use lots of the same techniques that made Google good at search to do things like spell checking, and (soon) translation. We use machine learning and statistical linguistics for that…

I mean agents, as well as work on spellchecker, who showed as lexical analyzer on a presentation, if he shows good results, it is theoretically possible to build an ontology based on the wave, is there any work in this direction?

Not yet but something we’ve talked about doing. We have a team (we call them “the beachcombers”) dedicated to that sort of thing…

In your opinion, when you can say that the Wave exceeded your expectations?

Hm that’ll take a while :) I have big hopes for Wave! I think when wave occupies the same or larger space in our minds that email did for my generation. Thousands of wave providers, perhaps billions of users (not all of Google Wave, of course, but of some wave system…) My brother, Jens, sometimes describes our wildest dream of wave becoming to the digital world what the paper is to the analog world. Big dream, that :)

Is it possible to add to the wave special instruments for banning these or that bots and accounts or to give an access to aproved users for banning?

It will be. We know we are still very weak in the area of permissions and abuse control. In particular this makes public waves sometimes difficult. We are working hard on various tools and will hopefully start launching some this or next month…

Is there any ideological kinship between Google Maps and Google Wave? If so, where is it?

Well in both cases we tried looking for an area that was popular yet somewhat stagnant. And then we tried starting fresh rather than trying to do incremental improvements on an existing paradigm. Of course we also like to think both Maps and Wave are helping to push the Web forward. We try to be at the very limit of what browsers can do, and then hope that the browser vendors will get exited about improving the web such that our type of applications become really natural to build….

It’s perhaps very good to work as brothers? Can you tell a little about your brother? In what aspects you are different from each other and vice-versa?

It can be difficult to work together at times. We argue a lot :) But good things seem to come out of it in the end. It helps that we are quite different and have quite different strengths. Jens always have the big, visionary ideas. I am better at execution. We agreed from the beginning to share all rewards (be it money or fame or whatever) equally, and always always always put our friendship above work. That’s what makes it possible…

If you have not become a programmer, who would you become?

I once wanted to become a veterinarian. I considered politics as well. I s’pose I studied Math for a while but I am not good enough at that :)

Google Maps – 2 Dane, Google Wave – 2 Dane, Google Chrome – another Dane. Can you comment this? :)

He he :) I am not sure. I note, though, that the ratio of Larses to Googlers have remained pretty much constant since I joined 5.5 years ago at 1 lars per 2000 Googler. :)

“Everythyng’s shiny, Cap’n”?

HA! You bet: not to fret! I do encourage everyone to watch the movie “Serenity” although I will deny any relationship between that movie and the name of my product :) But it is and excellent movie :)

OK, if you like here – please invite for the next Wave-marathon your countryman anв namesake – the father-developer of Google Chrome – Lars Bak. Meanwhile we would like to invite the Product Manager of Google Wave (earlier – Google Mail) Stephanie Hannon and hope for the positive answer.

OK I’ll ask :) no promises…

Перша частина інтерв’ю.