Waiting for the Wave

My small Google Wave invite post from yesterday was a great success. All 12 invites that I had left (out of 20) where all gone in a matter of a few hours. However, the time it takes Google to process their request (what the hell are they doing? checking them manually?) is kind of absurd.

Google Wave seems like a nice beta testing grounds for tech-savvy people like myself, but it is totally useless if you don't have any people to actually test it with! It's been about 24 hrs (give or take) since I invited everyone, but as far as I can tell no one actually got an invite.

So, I have had my Wave account for more than a day, but because of a lack of people to test it with, it has been sitting there... useless! I haven't Googled yet what the wait is about, but quite frankly: it's ridiculous. All it takes is just one mail! When Gmail was still beta and you invited someone, it would be instant. But with Wave it's like people at Google are going through each invite manually? What the heck?

I checked the Google invite gadget again to see what's going on there, and then this little line in there (that I didn't notice it earlier) struck me:

Invitations will not be send immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.

What? Stamps? Licking? C'mon! Get real Google! It's 2009! We live in the "on-demand" era! Not in the stage coaches and steam train era! Do something about it!

I like Google a lot. So much that I take time to sign up for a beta account and am willing to put time and effort to seriously test this next-gen thingy. But please, get your act together and don't make people wait!

Makes you wonder what the hell they are doing anyway? Social security check? See if you have bad credit? What? What is taking so long? Anyone that knows the answer: please enlighten us!