I should point out that they did tell people this. They were fairly clear how this was going to be open, that anyone could have a wave server, and how this could be employed.

A good example would be hosting a wave server like people host email servers. So, my domain could have it's own wave server. This would mean my comment here could easily be included on my blog. This would let me blog all my comments. Keep in mind, HN would have to support wave, but then commenting would still work the same way. Anyways, my comment would appear on my blog, and I could see your reply. I wouldn't have to remember to visit HN.

The interface to wave was essentially anything you already used. There are a lot of other really cool things you could do with this. And they told people you could do all this with it.

Unfortunately, they pushed the Wave UI as well, closing it up in a beta with special invites and suddenly people treated it like Gmail++.

So when you see people commenting how they really hope wave survives and eventually takes off, it's because what if does take off, things will get really interesting really fast.