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Google discontinues support for hangouts API
- franze 10y ago2054 days ago I wrote this: Why should anyone ever use a Google API ever again? http://googlecode.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-some-of-our-apis.html?showComment=1306481143396&m=1#c3564212561169948866 http://googlecode.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592399
- VikingCoder 10y agoWhy should you ever use any high-level API ever again? High level APIs tend to change. It's because they add value right now that would be hard to add in any other way.
- patmcguire 10y agoYeah, but there's the Stripe kind you can sort of rely on to be there, and then there's the kind that is basically guaranteed to go away.
- VikingCoder 10y agoI disagree with your fundamental premise. Companies go out of business all the time.
- euyyn 10y agolol quietly? The blog post was front page here and in /r/programming.
- sametmax 10y ago"quietly" from google.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoTotally meta comment but I'm kind of tired of "quietly" in headlines to add a surreptitious air to something. Almost as bad as "finally" added to make everything seem like it's arrived years too late. Is it simply impossible for people to run a news site without blatantly pushing people's buttons?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sp0rk 10y ago> The company didn’t even officially announce the abandonment of the API. Instead, the notice came in the form of an updated Frequently Asked Questions page outlining the termination, and an email to developers active on the platform. That doesn't seem to qualify as "quietly" to me. What did the author expect -- a full-page ad in the New York Times?
- dx034 10y agoA blog article so that everyone who follows Google's announcement will be informed? Blog articles will also be picked up by many tech pages, so it's effectively the NYT equivalent for tech.
- sametmax 10y agoAn article in their blog, at least, explaining their decision and making an official apology. It's good to let people know about it, but it's unprofessional to not publicly acknowledge it. At the very least it's a matter of respect for your community.
- jamespo 10y agoOfficial apology for retiring a free API?
- jsnathan 10y agoSeems to me that when you intentionally lead people to believe that they can depend on you for something in a way that they wouldn't otherwise have, you create an obligation for yourself to keep that promise. Should be that way, anyway.
- pmontra 10y agoGood luck with Duo. I had 9 contacts using it in August, that is, 9 contacts that installed it. I made two test calls and that's it. 15 contacts a couple of days ago, no more calls since August. I uninstalled it because I don't like to leave unused apps around.
- whyever 10y agoOn my phone it cannot be uninstalled. Your contacts might be in a similar situation.
- dx034 10y agoI use it as it's the only cross OS app that supports Wifi to phone network switching in a call (others end the call when you lose connection), but I really don't like it. It's exactly as it was when they published it. iOS supports call screens for other apps since a while now (which whatsapp uses), Duo calls still only come as a notification. And they also sometimes fail if the other person hasn't used the app for a few days. I really liked the concept of the app, and the quality is certainly at least on par with other apps. But I have the strong feeling that it won't be around for long. Let's hope Whatsapp supports network switching soon so that I can get rid of Duo.
- pmontra 10y agoThe question with Whatsapp is if Facebook is trying to cannibalize it into Messenger. They insist not supporting bots and if bots become big Whatsapp will be losing ground against everybody else. I'm puzzled by their strategy considering that FB is putting a lot of effort in supporting bots in Messenger. They could just use the same backend API and a passably similar UI in the app.
- traek 10y agoFrom what I've heard, the WhatsApp team has remained fairly independent internally. They're executing on a strategy separate from Messenger's.
- pawadu 10y ago
- leni536 10y agoGoodbye purple-hangouts [1] (it still works though I guess until April 25). [1] https://bitbucket.org/EionRobb/purple-hangouts https://bitbucket.org/EionRobb/purple-hangouts
- ominous 10y agoHm, actually: https://bitbucket.org/EionRobb/purple-hangouts/issues/114/google-drops-the-google-hangouts-api https://bitbucket.org/EionRobb/purple-hangouts/issues/114/go...
- talideon 10y agoThis is why I see no sense in even bothering with Google's IM offerings. Is there any other company that's gone through quite as many IM offerings as they have?
- apozem 10y agoGoogle's decisions on messaging have baffled me for years. Why get rid of gChat, a popular and useful service? Why not implement flawless SMS integration into Hangouts (send SMS from desktop) for people not on Google Voice? Why ditch Hangouts for Allo? Why would they think searching is something regular users would want in a messenger? Why?
- talideon 10y agoI think, though I have no way to confirm this, that it's down to internal siloing: gChat was there doing its thing, and meanwhile somebody was experimenting with Hangouts because they either couldn't or didn't want to deal with the gChat team. They produced their shiny object, and then gChat, which wasn't exactly ever given much love in the first place, was further marginalised and finally had its XMPP bridge killed in the face. Then Hangouts turned out to be a total mess, but by then they were committed to it. Meanwhile, somebody else was messing with AI internally decided to turn what they had in to a proper chat app, giving us Allo. I suspect Duo started as a way to rescue the video parts of Hangouts with WebRTC support, but that's all speculation. Edit: oh, and let's not forget Google's Spaces too! Seriously, Google need some joined up thinking when is comes to messaging.
- dilap 10y agoSo, basically, no leadership at Google. The funny thing is gChat was well-loved. They had a great starting point! Then they killed it and made a bunch of shit nobody wanted.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agomore like too much leadership. everyone is a leader. everyone is conquerer. you're all idiots.
- mikecb 10y agoWell, there's currently an invite only preview of a totally new experience, and it's focused on enterprise users, and no one really used this API, so what's the big deal?
- andrewclunn 10y agoGoogle abandoning a platform or dropping support for an API is hardly even news. They do this constantly. It's a hard lesson we developers should always keep in mind when selecting a platform, language, or toolkit.
- xg15 10y agoBut what consequences would you draw from that lesson?
- andrewclunn 10y agoLearn Rust instead of Go. Choose React over Angular.
- ghotli 10y agoMeh. Those technologies are poor examples of your point, imo.
- andrewclunn 10y agoThe Angular 1 / 2 situation is a great example. The Rust over Go is some advice based on the lesson learned.
- CaptSpify 10y agoPersonally speaking: Relying too much on 3rd parties (especially from companies like Google that have a history of removing systems) can break things. Design your systems to be resilient and standalone as much as possible.
- therealmarv 10y agoI recognized that quality was a little bit better on Duo with really bad network (50-200Kbit/s). I hope they do not forget to optimize Hangouts in parallel to Duo.
- ReverseCold 10y agoUnfortunately it looks like they don't really care about hangouts. It's pretty much the same thing from when it launched, except slower.
- dragonwriter 10y agoHangouts is being pivoted to be an enterprise messenger (which is why the API allowing building apps for the old, consimer-focussed Hangouts is being discontinued.)
- thw9871 10y agoIs this what they used to break their XMPP support ? I used to be able to chat with Google contacts without logging into Google, but that doesn't work anymore unless the other party is using XMPP with a 3rd party client (which is nobody).
- Navarr 10y ago> we will be retiring the Google+ Hangouts API that enables developers to build apps for the older version of Hangouts video calls. There's a lot of confusion (because Hangouts != Hangouts) about this closure, but this line from their FAQ sums it up pretty well.
- 20years 10y agoI was recently comparing the hangouts API to the join.me API for a project I was working on. I chose join.me mostly because I have been burned too many times by Google shutting down API's. Advice: don't use Google API's for any business related stuff that you anticipate sticking around for awhile.
- camus2 10y agoAnd then Google expects me to use paid lock-in services on Gcloud? I'll go with inferior but open-techs like XMPP, no thanks.
- fixermark 10y agoGenerally, Google's paid offerings stick around a lot longer, since there's money attached.
- markbnj 10y agoI don't get the connection. Google's cloud doesn't suffer from more or less lock-in opportunities than AWS for example. Messaging is just a mess. The cloud platform market is quite a different thing.
- BugsJustFindMe 10y agoReal world but maybe slightly noobish question here... When Google shuts down an API, how much of it is actually shut down? For example: I know they said they shut down the free Translation API back in 2011. If you go to their website they go on and on about how you have to pay for every use now...except...with a very simple query I can still throw requests through a Google server for free translations without any API key. So it's obviously not actually shut down. So when an API shuts down, is it actually shut down or does it keep on living just in secret hoping nobody notices? Is Translate a secret but maybe not so secret exception?
- dadoprso 10y agoMy guess is there are no guarantees. No support. You may get a response you may not. Your request may take 2 ms or 20000 ms. The service may get overloaded, etc.
- chinhodado 10y agoHave you tried to use the Translate "API" in any non trivial way? Google is very good at detecting this and will block your request (or present you with a captcha).