It was exceedingly simple to build simple network-based applications that would pretty much instantly replicate to wherever you wanted it. The applications were not very pretty, and all had a similar look and feel. It was extremely imaginative. I remember Bill Gates even back then, while taking a jibe at Ozzie for putting an OS in the product, said that he was one of the smartest programmers out there.
The web kind of changed everyone's way of thinking about that sort of stuff, and Notes kind of faded.
I am not quite sure what being anti-web means. If web means nice GUI brower stuff, then maybe, but if you think of web as being protocols with clients and servers, then I wouldn't agree.
And now, here comes Google and boom, everyone wants one.
I tried Groove back in the day, and it was actually one of the first "prior art" things I thought of when watching the Wave demo video. And, IIRC, Groove's backend was some sort of XML database....
That said, I think Wave is VERY WEB. Which is exactly why it stands a chance of succeeding where Ozzy's attempts have failed. I looked at the protocol and it doesn't seem all that crazy or complex. Robots can be written in any language as long as they can read and write JSON over HTTP. Gadgets are written in HTML and Javascript and are deployed over the web. It appears that near 100% of the gadgets and robots they demoed are UNIX-style "small, well-written programs that do one job well" and they plugin to a more complex UI.
Distributed, micro-kernel applications -- like the web -- do not preclude big ideas and large host apps. Browsers themselves are incredibly complex. If Wave proves to have utility and people use it, I don't see how it could fail.