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CNN.COM

Full Story Here http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/27/r...ave/index.html

(CNN) -- Lars and Jens Rasmussen were broke and jobless -- with only $16 between them -- when they made it big in the Web world by selling their idea for Google Maps.

Years later, after finding cushy employment at Google Inc., the Rasmussen brothers flew in May from Sydney, Australia, to California where they would debut their sophomore product, a Web application called Google Wave, which they say, quite audaciously, will kill e-mail and forever change online communication.

But their lives didn't depend on its success -- not like before.

Strange as it may seem, that worried them.

With Google Wave, the Danish brothers are trying to recreate the kind of near-ruin stress they experienced when they came up with the product that made them wildly successful.

In doing so, they're trying to prove that innovation, a somewhat magical and ethereal happening, can be engineered just like software.

But, as they prepared to take the stage to unveil Google Wave at a Web developers' conference in San Francisco, their faith in that hypothesis started to slip.

Was Wave too ambitious? Would the glitches come back? Was it too soon?

Were they under enough pressure?

And, worst of all: Would they become one-hit wonders?

A case of nerves

The night before Wave's big debut at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Lars Rasmussen laid in bed from 2:30 to 5 a.m.

It wasn't restful sleep.

His wife, Yarima, caught him practicing his pitch for Wave during the fretful slumber. He waved his hands in the air as if he were pointing at a projection screen. She knew he hadn't been sleeping in months as he prepared Wave for this presentation.

The next morning at the conference, Lars stood offstage, trying to calm his nerves by listening to Eminem on an iPod while a co-worker gave him a glowing introduction.

"The engineering leadership behind what you're about to see is the work of two brothers and an amazing engineering team with them," said Vic Gundotra, a Google vice president of engineering. He spoke in a coolly excited tone, like that of a school guidance counselor.

"Those two brothers are Lars and Jens Rasmussen. You might remember those names because those were the same amazing people that did another magical app, called maps ... Google Maps."

The stage at the conference had a game-show feel to it: A big logo -- all vertical stripes, just like "The Price is Right" -- served as a backdrop to two Jeopardy-looking podiums in the center of the stage.

Lars looked like he'd just gotten off a shift at the Gap. A microphone headset was stuck to his ear and he wore jeans and an untucked blue T-shirt with the Google Wave logo on it.

He fidgeted with a water bottle, opened his laptop and nervously began the biggest pitch of his life.

'Let's start a Wave'

Lars has always been the pitchman.

Jens is the quiet older brother: the eccentric, the idea guy.

When he's onto a big idea, Jens almost never writes it down. Words confine good thoughts and kill them, he says. He mulled over his idea for Google Maps for years before putting it into a written proposal.

But with Wave, he didn't have that luxury.

When the brothers joined Google together after selling Jens' idea for Google Maps, they already knew he had to come up with something new -- something bigger.

So Jens set to work. He shuttered himself in his Copenhagen, Denmark, apartment, tuned his television to MTV, watched some music videos and let his thoughts drift.

By the end of a weekend, he had come up with Google Wave, his idea for an e-mail killer.