I can't get past the feeling that this is what Wave could have been, and now I'm torn between the infinite possibilities it opens up and the horror that Google

I can't get past the feeling that this is what Wave could have been, and now I'm torn between the infinite possibilities it opens up and the horror that Google will have even more power over their kind of emails no one should support. I think the idea is good but the semantics aren't aligned: if a "thing" is to be modified, it can't be an email. There is too much history ingrained about emails being static and updates appearing in another email. But maybe this can open up a new form of collaboration that never mentions the word "email" but uses SMTP/IMAP as a transport. I'm thinking about what Deltachat is doing and it's using the protocols to transport "metadata" information that is not to be read directly by users. They even created embedded apps to further the capabilities and give users a way to do much more than just exchanging messages: https://webxdc.org/ https://webxdc.org/ All in all there is a place for self-modifiable documents with updates transported via SMTP, but the semantics need to be very clear. And it's hard to believe Google and follow it to be a good steward for an open, beneficial protocol and idea.