[HN Gopher] We're winding down Google Talk
___________________________________________________________________
We're winding down Google Talk
Author : tech234a
Score : 156 points
Date : 2022-06-12 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.google.com)
| dasz wrote:
| So, talk is now done. Great. What's next?
|
| Let's see: Google speak. Google yak. Google chatter. Google
| gossip. Google watercooler. Google friends. Google chums. Google
| getogether.
|
| I'm sure I missed one.
| [deleted]
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I really had a Mandela effect here: I thought Google Talk had
| died a long, long time ago, having been replaced with Hangouts.
| fritigern wrote:
| dom96 wrote:
| How long before Google Chat is dead?
| shagie wrote:
| There was a joke making its rounds back in May...
|
| > Overheard at Google IO: They're making 6 new chat apps this
| year and decommissioning 7 of them.
| tyingq wrote:
| I can't remember if this means my Polycom Google Voice ATA stops
| working or not. There was at least one third party Google Voice
| thing that needed Google Talk to work.
| sayrer wrote:
| So weird, because they actually had the best one for some time.
| The Windows Google Talk client was amazing.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| everything about it was great except the _google_ part. That
| part makes it unusable.
|
| whatsapp is a bit of a turd but i don't expect it to get janked
| half way the conversation.
| comrad wrote:
| Another google service bites the dust.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| The usual links, per tradition:
|
| * https://killedbygoogle.com/
|
| * https://gcemetery.co/
| refulgentis wrote:
| This is a 16 year old front end to the same chat service that
| you think of as Gmail chat / Gchat / Hangouts / etc., not
| sure if that's clear.
| Inhibit wrote:
| If it's only a frontend how does "we'll end our support for
| third-party apps, including Pidgin and Gajim" make sense?
| Just coinciding?
|
| That's what made me assume it was a whole stack rather than
| interface to a backend.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Ironically, Google Talk has already been on there and shows
| "2005 - 2013", so tells you about the accuracy of these
| websites.
| civilized wrote:
| Almost everyone was kicked off Google Talk and shoveled
| into Hangouts around 2013. I'm amazed to hear it was still
| running in some form.
| xeromal wrote:
| I think it's Google's branding. Google Talk used to be a
| desktop app on your PC that eventually became hangouts
| which lines up with the sunset in 2013 when desktop apps
| kind of died.. I think for some reason, google is called
| this Google Talk instead of hangouts and moving people to
| chat.
| oivey wrote:
| A normal company would have had basically one product all these
| years and not renamed it just due to internal engineering
| efforts.
|
| I also imagine chat apps are great for promotion driven
| development. Not that hard to make from scratch relative to
| something like search or maps. I'm surprised Gmail isn't
| constantly cannibalized, although still it has been a small
| amount. Some execs must be protecting dilution of that important
| brand.
| throwaway29303 wrote:
| A normal company would have had (...)
|
| Alphabet (or Google) is not a normal company. According to
| Alphabet's[0] website: As Sergey and I wrote in
| the original founders letter 11 years ago, "Google is not a
| conventional company. We do not intend to become one." As part
| of that, we also said that you could expect us to make "smaller
| bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange
| when compared to our current businesses." From the start, we've
| always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful
| things with the resources we have.
|
| [0] - https://abc.xyz
| Lammy wrote:
| Alphabet couldn't be a more appropriate name for such an
| "abnormal" company https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-
| origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
| [deleted]
| esrauch wrote:
| They did do Inbox which tried to cannabalize Gmail but it ended
| with it merging some features back in to Gmail instead.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| I really miss inbox
| gryfft wrote:
| The only thing more upsetting to me than having Inbox
| foisted on me was having it torn away from me afterwards. I
| was resistant to more change for the sake of change from
| Google, then Inbox won me over with its excellent UI. It
| became a combination of to-do list, email, and calendar
| that felt like an extension of my brain. The tiny
| concessions to its good UX that were pulled into Gmail were
| cold comfort. The equivalent functionality in GCalendar is
| way more clunky.
| danpalmer wrote:
| But Inbox was never foisted on anybody, the standard
| Gmail interface has always been available.
| gryfft wrote:
| I guess I'm misremembering again.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| They did shut it down before it took off though. And made a
| half hearted attempt to merge the features.
| conradfr wrote:
| That's a better outcome than the mediocre YouTube music
| killing Play Music.
| smeej wrote:
| Especially for those of us who had uploaded all our songs
| from CDs by miscellaneous local bands that went extinct
| long before every band put its songs on YouTube.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I kept using Hangouts for so long because of one thing only: XMPP
| support. Even without federation it put Hangouts into a different
| tier of service.
|
| Now I guess there is not a single mainstream service that
| supports any interoperable standard protoocol. What a sad state
| of affairs to be in 25 years after we had dozens of interoperable
| clients / protocols in routine use.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| At this time it is a running gag that Google creates a messenger
| every one or two years.
|
| They have so much leverage with google accounts, gmail and
| android ... pushing a WhatsApp / Telegram clone that works would
| take over the world.
|
| But they achieved to even cripple Google Meets, a product that
| works. Unbelievable.
| [deleted]
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Is the problem perhaps that a standalone product like WhatsApp
| or Telegram offers some degree of privacy?
|
| I'm not sure if Google Talk/Hangouts/whatever ever offered
| privacy, I know Telegram's privacy model has flaws, and I'm not
| clear on WhatsApp's quality of security. At any rate, I do know
| people expect both WhatsApp and Telegram to be relatively
| private, which likely counts for something. On the other hand,
| I find people assume Google products are by default not
| private.
|
| I'm not sure how decision making occurs, but I have a hard time
| envisioning a GoogleGram application getting adopted easily
| because it would be perceived as a commercial effort in an
| otherwise less commercial/more private space.
|
| I could be totally wrong here, and I'm mostly curious what
| others think.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| Google Hangouts ... I even forgot that that existed.
|
| I think most consumers use the product the works for them and
| is free. Privacy is an aspect, but most, not all, people
| don't care that much.
|
| A working product beats a half working product that preserves
| privacy. If it works and preserves privacy ... u have a
| winner.
| newsclues wrote:
| Failing to avoid antitrust issues if they succeed and become
| the dominant hub for online?
| BonoboIO wrote:
| They ,,sponsor" with x00 millions to exist. A competitor is
| great, because it avoids antitrusts like Microsoft had with
| IE.
| rwalle wrote:
| I don't think anyone antitrust is relevant at all in this
| discussion. Nobody would think that Google Talk/Chat/Whatever
| is remotely close to being scrutinized by government
| agencies.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > pushing a WhatsApp / Telegram clone that works would take
| over the world.
|
| True. It is frankly amazing how Google can't compete in that
| area
|
| They lack the vision. They lack the top-down mandate. They lack
| the will to centralize and push the effort.
|
| (see how most projects were experiments/things that "stuck"). I
| think one of the few times where Google successfully managed a
| global project to completion was Android? (and yet it was
| acquired)
| hypothesis wrote:
| Current wisdom is that company exists to make money and
| everything is optimized for that. What if workers are fully
| onboard and working hard for next promotion? For products that
| are not money making machines like the ad biz, let them wither
| and start a new every couple years?
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| Except WhatsApp has already taken over the world.
|
| There seems to be this perception that Google can defeat any
| competitor if they chose to, and that benefit of the doubt is
| never given to the competition. They can't, and fail almost
| every time time. Android is one exception (though Apple remains
| the more impressive company than Google, as far as 10Ks are
| concerned), and GCP is certainly successful despite having the
| Bronze medal in the cloud space, but it reeks of a "Lebron
| James could be the best boxer in the world or best NFL QB if he
| just trained for 3 months" kind of vibe.
| lousken wrote:
| rip xmpp support?
| mixedmath wrote:
| I guess. I've used the same xmpp integration for almost 15
| years now. I remember thinking it was going to stop working at
| some point in the past, but it kept on chugging. I think maybe
| this time it will really die.
|
| Too bad!
| leni536 wrote:
| Wasn't xmpp support dropped years ago?
| MattJ100 wrote:
| They've gradually broken it over the years, but it still runs
| in some limited form. It's barely interoperable with modern
| XMPP, but occasionally I hear of people still using it.
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| Most comments are critical about Google's way of doing things,
| but maybe this is a good moment for an eulogy. Is anyone using
| Google Talk right now or has good things to say about it? Was it
| a place where you happened to have meaningful conversation? (Not
| me, but sometimes I'm nostalgic about internet places that came
| and went...)
| civilized wrote:
| It would be great just to get an explanation of how people were
| even using it. Most users were kicked off Google Talk around
| 2013. Apparently third party apps were somehow allowed to
| continue using it.
| Macha wrote:
| It was fine. I talked to some people in there, I plugged it
| into Pidgin as I did those days, it was nice that I could talk
| to other people using my own domain and later moved to other
| providers without contacts noticing.
|
| Because it was open I could use a generic interface to it,
| which was good for me as it let me shove it into the same app
| as MSN, YIM and AIM, but not so good for Google as it didn't
| make it particularly sticky, which I gather is why they shelved
| it for hangouts (though they did leave it's undead corpse
| shamble on)
| colechristensen wrote:
| Which one was google talk?
| lelandfe wrote:
| For the last 5 years? Just a service. Google shut down all
| first party apps starting in 2012 and wrapping in 2017.
|
| Amusingly, they started sunsetting it to support the move to
| Google+ Hangouts. Not only does Google+ no longer exist, not
| only does Google+ Hangouts no longer exist, the _progeny_
| Google Hangouts is also dead.
| leetrout wrote:
| The first one. XMPP that worked with programs like Trillian and
| Adium.
| ballenf wrote:
| It even worked cross-platform with Messages (iMessages?) on
| Max OSX.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Until Apple killed IMServicePlugin :(
| eternityforest wrote:
| I just ignore any news relating to google communication services.
| Other than gmail, I just expect it to vanish in 18 months or
| less.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| bradgessler wrote:
| Google has had so many variants of this that I don't even know
| what they're shutting down by just reading the headline.
| [deleted]
| andrepd wrote:
| GChat, Talk, Duo, Meet, Hangouts... what did I miss?
| tech234a wrote:
| Also YouTube messaging
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Allo
| Animats wrote:
| Orkut.
| lowdest wrote:
| Wave
| morepork wrote:
| Messages, Voice, Allo (rip)
|
| even Google docs: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/arch
| ive/2019/03/hotte...
| agilob wrote:
| Let me help you, if you type `/hangout` command in Slack, it
| opens google meet...
| rrix2 wrote:
| And if you just type / and find that option in the list it's
| listed as a "Google+ Hangout"!
| lmkg wrote:
| Fun reading: An exhaustive(?) history of Google's communication
| tools. There are like five different products with "Hangout"
| branding.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...
| bborud wrote:
| If Google hadn't been so obsessed with making messaging special
| (one way or another) they might have managed to make it good.
| kgbcia wrote:
| Imagine if I did that to a production database. Instead of
| altering a table, just start over every schema change. Agile.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I mean, is anyone using it? Thought it was dead a long time ago.
| brightball wrote:
| Fwiw, Google Chat and Spaces, while not on the same level as
| Slack are definitely filling the "good enough to stick with"
| niche at a small company I'm helping now.
|
| If they actually commit to improving it, there's real potential
| there.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Google honestly has the worst products of any large tech.
| Confusing and irritating. The only bright spark they had was the
| single search box on the homepage. And that was a stroke of luck.
| I am sure if they tried anything else, they would have messed it
| up.
| [deleted]
| petre wrote:
| The annoying thing is that they put a search box on my phone's
| home screen, which I can't hide, even if I disable it.
| pjerem wrote:
| Right. But when it comes to confusing and irritating products,
| Microsoft is also very good.
| MandieD wrote:
| No one can match Microsoft for terrible naming and mind-
| bogglingly bad name changes.
|
| The epitome is the chat platform: starting out as the very
| generic Office Communications Server, then switching to the
| surprisingly clever Lync (short and unique, fantastically
| searchable), but then taking a turn for the literally blocked
| by corporate web proxies and unsearchable Skype for Business
| (the docs about switching to the new version were on hard-
| blocked skype.com), with confusing Skype for Business Online
| (same client, utterly different back end), and now to even
| less searchable Teams.
|
| I guess having two of their foundational products be
| extremely common English utterances just set them up for this
| lack of reflection.
| abraae wrote:
| I feel like my brain is now trained to skip over any Google chat-
| oriented product names or any information whatsoever about them
| simply because of the continuous churn.
|
| Instead I'm trained to just look for something that looks like a
| chat window and use that. I literally have no idea which one I
| actually use, nor whether this announcement affects me.
|
| I would love to know if inside Google there is any long term
| analysis of this. Is it just a series of teams getting accolades
| each year/quarter for Yet Another Chat Service? Or is someone
| taking the long view and evlauating just how much market
| confusion Google have spawned with this ridiculous never-ending
| saga?
| bogota wrote:
| You are not alone in feeling this way. Hangouts was awesome and
| for a while my friend group tried to keep up with whatever
| googles newly pitched chat app was. We all just use WhatsApp
| now.
| [deleted]
| meibo wrote:
| We migrated to Chat with our organization when they recommended
| it... It was rough for a while and it should've been in the oven
| for half a year longer, but now, it's an alright experience that
| ties in very well with the rest of workspace, especially
| considering that it's free of charge.
| akmarinov wrote:
| It's still pretty rough as far as features go.
|
| You can't automatically set a channel to be marked as read, for
| example.
| dsr_ wrote:
| It's beta!
|
| "Google Chat is now available in early preview for personal
| Google Accounts on Android and desktop. When you turn on
| Google Chat in Gmail settings, you can test the experience
| and features. You may not be able to switch back to classic
| Hangouts in Gmail settings."
|
| -- https://support.google.com/chat/answer/7653601
|
| Only giant monopoly profits can sustain decades-long
| incompetency like Google's messaging systems.
| losingom wrote:
| If nothing else, it's impressive that they've actually managed to
| migrate those Google Talk users over the years (myself included
| in that, albeit less than I used to). They probably did so
| extremely begrudgingly, but the path went something like:
|
| Google Talk -> Hangouts -> Google Chat
|
| People I added years ago are still reachable in Chat, which I
| guess is nice (in spite of everything else).
| ghaff wrote:
| And Google Chat is pretty decent IMO if you're committed to
| Google Workspace. How you use it is probably a bit cultural.
| Where I work--or at least the teams I interact with--it seems
| to have developed into use Chat if you want a somewhat near-
| time response rather than email. At least the people I know
| rarely text these days and essentially never call on voice.
| Group chats vary by context.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Hangouts worked excellently for so many years, even after most
| transitioned out of Talk (aka 3rd party clients) -- available
| in gmail, available on web, working app etc. Actually with Chat
| appearing on the scene the transition has been pretty seemless
| also, with Hangouts still working on web if you wanted it to,
| and interchangable with Chat versions.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Indeed, while not ideal, generally they've had a decent
| migration path. At least for the "message someone inside Gmail"
| usecase, as far as people are concern, for most people nothing
| has changed other than some slight UI. Outside of Gmail
| (especially on android) it is not as clean though.
| abirch wrote:
| I love Google but at this point I always expect them to drop
| support for anything.
| al_borland wrote:
| What would it take for you to not love them anymore? They're
| like a friend who is always making plans, then bailing at the
| last minute.
| WheatM wrote:
| pempem wrote:
| A cohesive suite of products mimicking microsoft connected
| to my inbox and a text feature :D preferbly with around 10+
| years of my data.
|
| I can't lie, its a heavy moat.
| lmm wrote:
| If maps started sucking I'd leave. We'll see how bad the
| new advertising features get. But right now it's just head
| and shoulders above anything else.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, Maps is the best I've used. I had Apple maps on the
| other day. I knew the area and knew I was close to the
| destination. A left turn and about 100 yards down the
| road. Apple wanted to take me nearly a mile north and
| then loop back. It does that kind of stuff all the time.
|
| I haven't compared Google Maps to a dedicated device like
| a Garmin. I wonder how that would do.
| remflight wrote:
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Talk, chat, meet, hangouts, duo?
|
| Are these the same - what will gsuite users use wtf
| al_borland wrote:
| Google's history with messaging services has been a mess. I don't
| see how they will ever get anywhere if they are always starting
| over. I have very little interest in anything Google makes in
| this space as a result.
|
| Google Talk, Chat, Meet, Duo, Messages, Hangouts.... I'm sure Im
| missing some. It's like they don't have any idea where they want
| to go and need to make a whole new service every time they have
| an idea, instead of just adding a feature to their existing
| service.
| delecti wrote:
| Also Allo and Buzz, plus chatting with other editors in Docs.
| SMS through Voice also integrated into Talk/Chat/Hangouts at
| various points.
|
| If they had put an even remotely competent person (who cares
| about more than just getting promoted) in charge and they could
| have been a leading player the space by just keeping things
| clear enough to follow.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It is clearly the result of the internal structure of Google
| where no one in charge is seemingly that interested in
| producing cohesive products, there is apparently a kind of
| internal competitive economy which results in this and other
| nonsense.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Youtube Chat and Google Maps chat too
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| You can send IMs via GPay. There was even a short lived
| "groups" option
| lmm wrote:
| Which payment system is that? IIRC GPay means different
| things in different countries.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| GPay India.
|
| Additionally I realised you can also send messages in
| Google Photos app using shared albums.
|
| Maybe we ought to ask which Google app _isn 't_ a
| messaging app
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Why the heck would Google Maps have chat??
| pooper wrote:
| Waze has (or has had) beep beep as long as I can remember
| but nobody questions why Waze has chat...
| petre wrote:
| So you can text while in a traffic jam and probably hit
| the car in front if you?
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Ask for directions?
|
| ba dum tssss.
| dehrmann wrote:
| They also acquihired Meebo.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| _I don 't see how they will ever get anywhere if they are
| always starting over_
|
| I'm sure literally thousands of Google employees have gotten
| promoted on the strength of their work on building out yet
| another new chat platform. That's why they keep doing this; it
| has nothing to do with any sort of broad corporate strategy.
| It's individuals optimizing for their own success instead of
| for some vague notion of corporate success.
| akkartik wrote:
| That explanation helps but doesn't explain why new chat apps
| get greenlit more often than new local shopping sites, social
| networks or balloonshots.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Why is everyone sidestepping the most potent explanation -
| incompetent leadership.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _That explanation helps but doesn 't explain why new chat
| apps get greenlit more often than new local shopping sites,
| social networks or balloonshots._
|
| Who said those other (local shopping sites, social networks
| or balloonshots) aren't green lit just as often, and
| discarded just as fast when they get bored, from Google?
| E.g. social networks: Remember Orkut? Wave? Plus?
| akkartik wrote:
| The last of those was 10 years ago. They seem to have
| learned from their experience there. It's only chat apps
| that seem a stubborn blind spot.
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| Promotion Driven Development combined with
| https://xkcd.com/927/ and a heaping helping of
| decentralized decision making and probably charisma in
| order to convince someone that This Time It's
| Different(tm).
| travisgriggs wrote:
| A never ending boatload of enabling cash from the golden
| goose of adtech monopoly certainly contributes to this as
| well?
| YZF wrote:
| Definitely. Basically the business results (ad revenue)
| is more or less decoupled, in the short and medium terms,
| from what I would guess 90% of engineers in Google do. So
| calculate digits of Pi, write books and blog posts, write
| chat apps, reinvent any wheel possible, rewrite code all
| the time. A lot of Google's software is actually becoming
| worse, search, chat, navigation/maps as the 10% that are
| doing valuable work are fighting entropy and the other
| 90%.
|
| Pure speculation (other than the part about their
| software becoming worse) so would be interested in the
| insider's take here. That said it's a pattern I've seen
| in other places. It's crazy that with so many people of
| this caliber they're basically spinning their wheels in
| many areas. Some progress in a few areas, like cloud.
| Macha wrote:
| Bigger potential gains, the market is controlled by
| competitors (FB's Whatsapp in Europe, Apple's iMessage in
| the US), easiest to convince an exec to greenlight it.
| gedy wrote:
| Yeah I'm just one person, but their confusing and chaotic
| approach to messaging apps and the Inbox vs GMail thing a few
| years ago were the two things what turned me from respecting
| Google and interested in their new apps into believing the
| don't have any idea or care what they are doing and better off
| not trying out or depending on their offerings.
|
| (Thank goodness they haven't done same to maps and docs).
| techdragon wrote:
| That's a really good way to describe it. I no longer respect
| Google. Their core search engine is in decline, their cloud
| is innovative but useless and has the most confusing UI of
| the three major cloud vendors, they began weaponising open
| source as a recruitment pipeline, and they can deliver a
| product with any sort of expectation that it will last more
| than 12 months anymore...
|
| I have lost respect for them. I have gone from an
| enthusiastic Search and chrome and gmail user... I got into
| the invite only beta in the first six months! ... to
| basically only caring when Google do things that affect the
| non-stuff I actually care about.
| brian_cunnie wrote:
| > cloud is innovative but useless and has the most
| confusing UI of the three major cloud vendors
|
| I beg to disagree: I find AWS's UI the most confusing--I am
| showered with services I don't use & don't know what they
| do (Beanstalk? I have no idea what that is). I find that if
| I stick with VPC and EC2 I'm safe, but even then they throw
| some curve balls at you: for example, VPC is all about
| networking & IP addresses unless you're talking about
| Elastic IPs, in which case you need to go to EC2.
|
| Azure's interface is okay, but the sliding menus-thing
| throws me off.
|
| Google's is the cleanest UI IMHO. Not too many services,
| intelligently grouped.
|
| Although I've used AWS the longest & am used to its
| idiosyncrasies, I'm under no illusion that its UI well laid
| out.
| torvald wrote:
| Don't forget a out Google Wave!
| flowerbeater wrote:
| Or Google Buzz!
| jedberg wrote:
| >It's like they don't have any idea where they want to go and
| need to make a whole new service every time they have an idea,
| instead of just adding a feature to their existing service.
|
| It happens because of their internal promotion culture. You get
| a promotion much faster if you make something new than if you
| improve something old.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Don't they have a rule that you can't create something that
| competes with another Google product? How do any of these get
| created in the first place?
| londons_explore wrote:
| There is no such rule. "Make a better thing thats so good
| that the users all choose to use the new thing over the old
| thing" is the aim...
| al_borland wrote:
| That was probably a fine idea when they were getting
| started and just throwing ideas against the wall when
| starting at 0, but they are a big establish company with
| big established products. They can't just throw the baby
| out with the bathwater every time and expect users to
| actually be on board.
|
| Google Wave was the perfect example of that. Wave would
| have been amazing if it was integrated into Gmail. Like
| Apple did with iMessage, if a Gmail user emailed another
| Gmail user (or group of users) it would turn into a Wave
| and get a bunch of extra features. This would have
| provided value, instantly given it millions of users, and
| encouraged current users to get their friends and co-
| workers on Gmail to use Waves. Instead, they made it it's
| own invite-only service (trying to recreate the Gmail
| magic) and it was a failure due to lack of users.
|
| This is a horrible strategy and they are going to
| continue shooting themselves in the foot if they don't
| pivot.
| houseofzeus wrote:
| Also, never consider how you will migrate users of the
| old thing if you are ever actually successful.
| [deleted]
| pkulak wrote:
| As a developer I'd much rather build something new than work
| on someone else's code. There's got to be much more than just
| a management problem here.
| jedberg wrote:
| I'd much rather improve an old and popular, but flawed,
| existing product, and delight millions of users with an
| improved experience.
|
| A good company has both kinds of developers, ideally more
| of the improve type than the build new type.
|
| Google's management failure is that the optimize for the
| "build new" engineer and actually punish the "improve"
| engineer by stalling their career.
| al_borland wrote:
| The occasional revolution is great and necessary, but
| evolution is extremely underrated.
|
| Apple tends to do this well. Messages feels like one
| continuous evolution from the basic SMS app on the first
| iPhone. When iChat moved to Messages a couple features
| were lost, but the important ones are back now. It was a
| new name, but it felt more like a unification between iOS
| and macOS vs just thinking a new app would help them get
| more users.
|
| If someone went from a v1 iPhone to an iPhone 13, the new
| one would have dramatically more features and
| capabilities, yet it will still feel familiar. There is a
| lot of value in that. Engineers can "build new" within an
| existing framework if the foundation is solid.
|
| When the "build new" dev make something new it's up to
| management to decide if it should be a feature of the
| existing service or if it's foundational enough to
| require a whole new app. That choice to build new should
| not be taken lightly, as migrating millions of users is
| not a trivial task and they will lose people along the
| way.
| duxup wrote:
| > are always starting over
|
| I wouldn't mind it if they kept features or something. Some
| coherent process, features, etc.
|
| But it is a half baked deal every time with old / obvious
| features missing.
|
| They operate like a mini no name start up and as far as I'm
| concerned I don't think of it that way / if it has the name
| Google I expect some level of polish...maybe respect the users
| who get dragged from app to app...
| noneeeed wrote:
| It's like what happened with Google Pay (I think it was that)
| where they rewrote it from scratch with fewer features, it
| was so bizarre.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| google play music to yt music. they rewrote from scratch
| with less features and more bugs
| [deleted]
| refulgentis wrote:
| HN tends to read deprecation notices (in this case, for a 17
| year old frontend) and immediately bring up every marketing
| name for anything and everything involving text communication
| Google has ever made.
|
| For the record:
|
| - v1 - "Gchat" - simple chat added to Gmail
|
| - v2 - "Google Talk" - 2005 - general chat service created out
| of "Gchat" enabling people to use it outside Gmail
|
| - v3 - "Google Hangouts" - 2013 - integrate video chat from G+
| into Talk
|
| - v4 - "Google Meet/Chat" - 2017 - split Hangouts into video
| (Meet) and messaging (Chat)
| [deleted]
| al_borland wrote:
| No one should need to be a Google historian to know where to
| go to send a message.
| refulgentis wrote:
| You don't. This is a 'not even wrong' argument in reality,
| though a definite problem theoretically.
|
| In that timeline I laid out, wherever your message was,
| even going back to 2005 unnamed Gmail feature, it's still
| there.
| kbelder wrote:
| What's Google Duo?
| Macha wrote:
| Allo and Due are two entirely seperate apps that undermines
| the point the author is trying to make.
|
| Not to mention that Meet existed before it was called Meet,
| and was confusingly also called Hangouts at that point but
| had no interop with consumer Hangouts.
| pjerem wrote:
| Marketing names are what the users use. Users don't say <<
| let's get in touch via Google Chat Platform Protocol v4".
|
| They use the marketing name without knowing what is behind.
| And to be fair, as of today, I'm not even sure non tech
| people even know how the current mainstream Google chat is
| named. The only time I used Google chat (maybe it was
| hangouts) was to reach my coworkers when slack was down.
| mpol wrote:
| If it is all different frontends to the same backend, they
| very much failed at marketing. For an advertising company,
| creating this much chaos in their branding and communication
| is very confusing and somewhat laughable.
| q-big wrote:
| > For an advertising company
|
| Google is not an advertising company, but a provider of
| space for advertising.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Distinction without a difference
|
| Its not like they assemble billboards
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Idk that really feels like what adsense and such are.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| When are we going to get the google version of WOOF to unify
| all of these disparate services?
| triggerman722 wrote:
| Underrated post...assuming you mean wuphf lol
| thefourthchime wrote:
| It's like 12 or 13. I've never seen a company fail this much at
| something.. They need to create a Razzie just to give it to
| google for their total incompetence at chat.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...
| orthoxerox wrote:
| I remember reading this article and thinking, "okay, this is
| already absurd, things can't get any worse" and then there's
| _another_ chat engine Google once used to have. And
| _another_. And it keeps going on.
| imglorp wrote:
| It's only failing if you define that as "not dominating the
| planet's chat", which has a bunch of externalities. Several
| of their chat products were decent and companies were able to
| run all their internal meeting rooms off them.
|
| What IS a failure is the thrash within that whole set of
| products. Adoption of new users via network effect is the
| activation energy and every flipflop halves their potential
| new market.
|
| If they had simply stayed on, say, hangouts and kept
| improving it, they would keep all those users they lost.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| That's a very comprehensive article, thank you, but I'm
| reminded of an earlier one from 2018 with the amusing title:
|
| "Google to simplify messaging strategy, will support only
| five messaging apps"
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/google-promises-
| to-s...
| travisgriggs wrote:
| "We're winding down Google"
|
| That's the headline I keep waiting for.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1361/ ?
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Made my day, despite the downvotes. Thanks. Especially the
| "and the 8.8.8.8 DNS server"
| tims33 wrote:
| The problem with chat is that every big tech company is only
| interested in "winning" vs driving usage. Google would be better
| off fighting for open standards to improve their position in this
| market. Open standards in the 70s, 80s, and 90s did such great
| things for technology.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| aren't all the Big Tech companies you are thinking of, actually
| American Big Tech companies spreading out into other places? If
| I were not an American, I can definitely sympathize with the
| point of view that having American companies run vital
| communications for other populations.. is not OK. Open
| Standards are the concerted effort of thinking people to make
| something where the motivations can vary, but the tech is
| reliable. I think it is no accident that things like weather
| apps, chat, and trading photos have become ... not only that ..
| brian_cunnie wrote:
| Good point! I think the EU is gonna force Apple to open up
| Messages, in which case Apple Messages will become the _de
| facto_ standard.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| But not many people use iMessages in EU to begin with. Its
| more of an American thing because of history of texting and
| the iMessage color phenomenon.
| ghaff wrote:
| Some of it is probably history in US. Texting used to be
| very expensive.
|
| Admittedly, I couldn't even tell you what I pay--if
| anything--in non-iMessage texts these days on a bog-
| standard AT&T plan but it's not something enough to take
| note of and I don't take the color into any account when
| texting.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I feel like texting was unlimited by the time iMessage
| became prominent. At least I do not recall text costs
| being a concern for domestic texts anytime in the 2010s.
|
| I do remember international texting costs driving
| adoption of WhatsApp though. It was a killer app that
| everyone knew how to instantly use, not have spam, and
| the contacts/pics/video/group sharing just worked across
| all phone OSs.
|
| Edit: In fact, the exact opposite is what I think
| happened. Texting was unlimited in the US, or effectively
| unlimited because it was so cheap, that people in the US
| did not bother to look into a non default SMS/MMS apps to
| message others, since Americans are mostly contacting
| other Americans.
|
| All the people I knew who had international contacts
| jumped on WhatsApp, but a huge portion of Americans never
| contact anyone outside America, so they never cared about
| international messaging costs, and never bothered with
| WhatsApp/Viber/Tango/Skype/whatever other chat app was
| out there to bypass text costs.
|
| This gave Apple an advantage because they can implement
| their own iMessage in the default SMS/MMS app, and ramp
| people up onto iMessage without people even choosing it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, I'll use WhatsApp or something like Facebook
| Messenger for the maybe handful of international folks I
| sometimes text with. But I don't care if Americans are
| texting green or blue--and that's 99% of the people I
| text with.
|
| I _communicate_ with Europeans in particular all the
| time. But those are via Gmail /Gchat or Twitter mostly.
| goldcd wrote:
| It's very much a US-centric thing.
|
| Rest of the world is bemused by the stories of bullied US
| teenagers who don't have 'the right' bubble colour on their
| SMS-ish app. Elsewhere we've all been using
| whatsapp/telegram/signal etc for years and we're never
| going back.
|
| I think maybe the worst decision Apple made was not trying
| to push out their service (with maybe a few limitations to
| upsell the hardware) - although I guess blackberry tried to
| do that and it didn't work out.
| MAGZine wrote:
| blackberry's effort wasn't honest. They only opened it up
| after their platform had been bleeding users for a while.
|
| If they were first to market with an app for android and
| ios I feel like things might have gone very differently.
| WheatM wrote:
| You're overstating the importance of Apple outside of the
| USA. No one I know uses Apple Messages.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't want iMessage to be a _de facto_ standard. I want my
| work stuff to be mostly on my work channels. Very little work
| stuff gets onto my cell phone number which includes iMessage.
| petre wrote:
| In France they have a law that the employer is not allowed
| to call you off work hours. I think it should also apply to
| instant messaging. They also have another good law which
| prohibits eating in the office, so they all have to take
| the lunch break off and eat at a restaurant or bistro or
| canteen. Which is great because food delivery also
| generates single use food container waste and also food
| waste.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1103463809/why-eating-at-
| your...
| ghaff wrote:
| I mostly don't even want IMs on my personal phone though
| --and I don't want to carry two phones. I personally have
| no issue with doing some quick work off and on after
| hours--so long as you have no trouble with me taking care
| of some errands during the day. Seems a pretty good
| tradeoff.
|
| When I went into an office, I would sometimes grab lunch
| at my desk if I just wanted some calories and wrap up my
| day as quickly as possible. Otherwise I'd eat with people
| in the cafeteria or go out (options for both of which
| varied a lot by job).
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Thats terrible, because it you can't bring your own food?
| What the hell do with people limit/weird diets do?
| petre wrote:
| Yes you can, just not eat it in the office. They also
| bring their own food. I guess there are places where you
| can eat you own food confortably.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Is someone actually going to call the police if I'm
| eating a sandwich at my desk? And are they going to
| respond?
| majewsky wrote:
| Agreed on the food container waste, but why would eating
| at the desk vs. in a restaurant cause more food waste?
| I'm just eating the same portion in a different place.
|
| Also, when no one else is in the office, I sometimes like
| eating at my desk because I can eat by myself instead of
| having to deal with noisy people at the other tables.
| petre wrote:
| Because something always comes up and the food goes cold
| and stale?
|
| Plus the office reeks of food, ketchup on your keyboard,
| unhygenic. You can eat wherewer you want, just not in the
| office. You can eat in the park. The thing is, one also
| gets to disconnect from work, walk away from the desk and
| maintain a proper work life balance. Some French
| individuals also use the lunch break to exercise.
|
| I don't live in France but we use the meeting room to
| eat, instead of eating at our desks. We properly vent it
| afterwards, of course.
| usrn wrote:
| Hopefully they'll just force everyone to federate with XMPP
| again. That was pretty great and now we have OMEMO so it's
| even E2EE.
| mavhc wrote:
| In the 70s/80s/90s your software didn't change every day.
| Google started with xmpp with Talk, but it didn't evolve fast
| enough to add new features. In Talk days I had to dismiss
| notifications from every device, even though I'd read it on
| one. And file sharing, video calls, audio calls, group messages
| didn't work well.
|
| The internet enabled software to update every day, that made
| standards way less relevant, sadly.
|
| The HTML5 model of standards is probably best for the modern
| world
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| yes, in theory XMPP should have won everything (with clients
| built on top) -- but there's this other thing of users being so
| dumb/wool over the eyes about new flashy apps and not
| understanding "texting" as SMS vs internet based messaging and
| international differences meant stupid closed things like
| WhatsApp took off and none are the wiser. Ridiculous to this
| day that WhatsApp conned so many people into thinking they were
| getting 'free texting' by basically making the accounts phone
| numbers, even tho there's no connection to cell networks/SMS.
| Arrgh. Not to mention a similar sort of confusion with
| iMessage. But its so hard to counter momentum and social circle
| movement with these things and ppl's willingness/unwillingness
| to jump apps or run ten messaging apps crazily.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Consumers don't care if the text goes through cell networks
| or the internet. They don't even care if the message appears
| in WhatsApp or their messages app. All they care about is
| sending a message or an image to a phone number and they want
| the cheapest and fastest way to do that. So they aren't as
| stupid as they appear
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