The other major problem with Wave is its generous contribution to the larger problem of over complexity and information overload. There is so much going on here that Wave fights against the quest for clarity, simplicity and minimalism - the qualities that made Google famous. This is essentially what Microsoft attempted with Outlook, and the result was bloat. " " I'm not sure we need yet another app that does everything.

The biggest problem with Bing and Wave is that both are on the wrong side of two technology-design battles raging in the industry. The first is the battle over linearity, and the other is the battle for mobility.

Have you noticed that every massively popular new way to communicate in the past few years has shared the attribute of perfect linearity? First e-mail, then chat, then blogs, then Twitter -- all provided the benefit of strict, top-to-bottom, most-recent-first organization. Linearity imposes clarity on information, and puts the user's mind at ease. All attempts to "improve" these media with non-linear views have failed. People love linearity.

But this is exactly how both Microsoft and Google are trying to improve search and communication, respectively: by introducing non-linearity. In the case of Bing, Microsoft displays results in order down the middle of the page. But there are alternative results on the left as well. It's not a big deal, and Google has introduced similar non-linearity in recent years. But Google got rich and famous by providing a single search box, followed by a single ordered list of results.