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Google Splits Hangouts into Chat and Meet
- anigbrowl 10y agoGood grief Google, make up your mind. It's like some sad corporate race condition. Google keeps optimizing things but has no guiding vision. I might as well be watching cats in a diamond mine.
- nottorp 10y agoThe problem with google chat services is... will they last more than 6 months? Considering how many changes Hangouts went through, do I even want to waste time on evaluate its current incarnation?
- pfooti 10y agoThe unclear thing here is: what is going to happen to hangouts on personal accounts? I use google hangouts on my gmail account for group hangouts all the time (role-playing game group that's geographically distributed, for example). I mean, I'll use hangouts meet or whatever instead of vidchat hangouts, but only if it exists.
- syntheticnature 10y agoI agree, since I engage in a bit of this myself, though admittedly the largest such chat got moved over to Slack a while ago due to the (at the time) lack of any easy way to remove someone from a group hangout.
- neogodless 10y agoMeet Google's suite of messaging apps: Alphabet. You can only communicate using the letter matching the app you're using.
- scottmf 10y agoI was starting to wonder if they were even going to launch a new messaging product this week.
- cwyers 10y agoTheir messaging strategy was lumbering worryingly towards being comprehensible. I'm glad they corrected that.
- crestedtazo 10y agoI thought these types of comments weren't allowed on Hacker News? I'm curious why a mod hasn't detached this comment yet.
- tn_ 10y agohttps://www.wsj.com/articles/google-has-a-messaging-app-problem-1485267212 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-has-a-messaging-app-prob...
- MyMan1 10y agoOh good we've gone full circle, back to Google Chat.
- samfisher83 10y agoI think gchat always worked at least inside gmail.
- mynameisvlad 10y agoThat transitioned over to Hangouts in 2013, and the final GChat app (Windows) stopped working 2 years ago.
- jdoliner 10y agoI feel like this isn't even the first time we've gone full circle on Google's messaging products.
- joshwd 10y agoOh yay, more chat apps from Google. I had finally hit a nice point of integration: using Hangouts with Project Fi means I got somewhat close to the iMessage experience (at least as far as being able to send/receive SMS from my computer). Clearly the integration wasn't great, and the Hangouts app is badly in need of work, but it's a shame to see that even that limited functionality is going away in favor of more fragmentation.
- tyingq 10y agoI saw the headline and honestly thought it was a satire piece.
- MasterScrat 10y agoThis comes to mind: http://www.bonkersworld.net/confusement/ http://www.bonkersworld.net/confusement/
- certifiedloud 10y agoI use PushBullet to send SMS from my computer. It get's the job done. https://www.pushbullet.com/ https://www.pushbullet.com/
- LordWinstanley 10y agoJoin[1] is a nice alternative to PushBullet. Does most of what PushBullet does [including sending SMS from your computer] but costs a one-time fee of £4,99, instead of PushBullet's monthly subscription. [1] https://joaoapps.com/join/ https://joaoapps.com/join/
- certifiedloud 10y agoAwesome! I'm glad you said something because that looks great.
- memmcgee 10y agoI wouldn't trust a one time fee app to be properly maintained though.
- technological 10y agoI think this may attract customer who have existing Gapps suit in their organization. Advantage slack has is integration with different things and you can use any email address to sign up. if Chat and meet required to sign in with only Gmail then people may not want to get locked in
- arcanus 10y agoI'm no fan of slack but I don't see this as being competitive. Google hangouts (which I use for sms, among other things) has a very poor search feature. Slack on the other hand has decent search capabilities. Plus, slack-bots are well integrated already. It does not avoid my largest criticism of slack: the inability to save conversation history locally. This sounds like a late to market slack-clone. What is innovative about this offering?
- curt15 10y ago>Google hangouts (which I use for sms, among other things) has a very poor search feature. Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks that a search function seems absolutely basic for a messaging app.
- chu4n 10y agoHangouts Chat does indeed have powerful search functionality built-in, as shown in the demo. Screenshot from TC: https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/664cd61d-2671-4f4a-be3a-0033d1def68e.png https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/664cd61...
- anw 10y agoSlack is very important to a lot of companies and groups. We use it not only as an IRC replacement, but also to hook into our CI and git repos. Along with the wealth of information and tools already put in there, there is the mindset that Slack is our communication tool we can rely on. Google does not have a good track record when it comes to supporting their products. Look at Picasa, Google Glass, Bump, Currents, and sadly, Google Reader. Google is good at advertising, email, and search. But I would not put any investment of time or data into their other products if I knew I needed them in the future.
- 01000001 10y agoMy thought exactly. How long could I use this for, before it was ripped away from me? How much would I invest into this, only to get told I have two months to migrate? Sorry Google, your search is great, your email services easy to use, but everything from your Apps for business panel through to your plethora of half-baked products are messy and inaccessible.
- thecrumb 10y agoWow, Google playing catch up to Microsoft who's playing catch up to Slack.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago...neither of which has any support for third-party clients, still.
- make3 10y agoI hope they'll fuse chat, message and allo, this is getting ridiculous
- zitterbewegung 10y agoIs Google's strategy to enumerate all possible messaging / social applications ? Then either stop development on them or shut them down when they don't have more than 1 million people using them within 6 months?
- pierrebeaucamp 10y ago> Your browser doesn't support Hangouts Meet > To join this meeting, install the latest version of Google Chrome. I guess no more meetings for me then...
- NoGravitas 10y agoLucky ducky.
- seanwilson 10y agoWhy do Google keep rebranding their chat attempts? Why don't they iteratively improve what they have?
- artursapek 10y agoPoor organization structure, I'd guess
- jboggan 10y agoMost tech companies are like nation states, ruled from above by a single strong leader (Apple under Jobs being the best example). I've become to understand Google is much more like Germany in the mid-19th century - a collection of competing principalities with a common language but a weak and ineffective government coordinating their efforts. I remember being told on the first day of orientation that Google was not a meritocracy, but a feudal society. I think all of our more puzzling product evolutions make much more sense in that light.
- 1_2__3 10y agoOh for fuck's sake. Which is basically what I end up thinking after virtually every Google announcement regarding chat.
- sctb 10y agoWe can profitably do without more drive-by snark (which we've asked you repeatedly not to post) on Hacker News.
- zeveb 10y agoHonestly, I think this is exactly the sort of sentiment we need on Hacker News, because I think it accurately and succinctly represents the opinion of a significant portion of the community with respect to Google's chat apps. Sometimes snark is the only decent response to a situation; I think that Google's chat quagmire is arguably one of those.
- shmerl 10y agoGoogle still didn't fix the damage they did by abandoning XMPP, and not supporting server to server encryption in Google Talk.
- vkou 10y agoSNAP has a market cap of 29 billion USD, and does not support XMPP.
- rjammala 10y agoHope the quality of Video Chat is as good as Apple's FaceTime.
- edgyswingset 10y agoI hope this means that various usability and performance issues with Hangouts I've had improves. That said, I'm having trouble not laughing out loud at this whole thing. It legitimately feels to me like they have no clue what they're doing and are spinning their wheels so that they have wheels to spin.
- ketralnis 10y agoSo now they have: * Gmail * Google Talk * Google Voice * Allo * Duo * Hangouts Chat * Hangouts Meet Am I missing any products that compete with their own other products?
- Splendor 10y agoGoogle+ Communities overlap with group chat in some ways.
- booleandilemma 10y agoInbox by Gmail
- Macha 10y agoI mean Inbox is just an alternative Gmail client, so its not like you can't communicate between Gmail and inbox. This is not the case for e.g. hangouts and allo
- devopsproject 10y agoMessanger which got renamed to Android Messages a few weeks ago
- izacus 10y agoThat's just the SMS app.
- accountface 10y agoHangouts, Voice, and Allo are all meant to be SMS replacements — so they are directly competing with their SMS app.
- Infinitesimus 10y agoI sometimes wonder how Google's Product/PM team views their products and how they think having a reputation among techies for a very fragmented software base and focus helps them. I get the idea of internally challenging yourselves to come up with replacements for your products but at least have some clear focus. Why are there so many different ways for me to connect with people when using Google's platform? The beauty of iMessage at least in the mobile space is that it's your single app for text communications and Facetime for video. That's it. Bonus if you have a Mac since you can use it from your computer as well.
- eganist 10y agoAllo Duo Chat Meet Voice -- Did I miss any?
- dantiberian 10y agoYes Google's chat strategy is a mess, but this part is great news: > It’s a full rewrite of the Hangouts meeting experience and will work without any plug-ins (and Google also promises that it will be lighter on the processor, too, and won’t eat into your battery life or make your laptop’s fans spin at full speed). The team also cut down on the code size and promises that meetings will load “instantly.” Our team spans macOS, Windows, and Linux and each one of us has our own unique bugs with Hangouts ranging from robotic voices to not being able to join existing Hangouts. In short it's a giant mess. I'm glad to see they're starting from scratch, hopefully this time around will be more reliable.
- izacus 10y agoOf course their "rewrite" and fix currently means that it only works on Chrome and not other browsers.
- IanCal 10y agoIf it works properly, then it's no worse than having to install any other specific app like slack.
- therealmarv 10y agoThis! And I hope that they fix the "calling now" issue. I still don't get why they did not make a small desktop app and voice only calling to destroy Skype. So much potential wasted.
- Shorel 10y agoThey clearly think desktop apps are obsolete.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoMore than likely Google Meet is trying to take market segment away from Slack with the major advantage of offering video meetings. I can't imagine it will be free. Not that I suggest it should be. edit: Nope. https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html
- aembleton 10y agoI'm more concerned that they would abruptly drop it in a couple of years.
- artursapek 10y agoDoes it work with Gmail chat?
- abarringer 10y agoGoogle Cloud Next '17... introducing products that will go live in '18 and be shuttered in '20. Our company is evaluating team collaboration products right now. I told them not to even look at hangouts because you couldn't trust Google to keep a product alive. This was two days ago...
- leipert 10y agoIf you are still looking at this, we use the following solutions at work: - https://meet.jit.si https://meet.jit.si as a hangout replacement (seems like a polished hangout alternative) - https://about.mattermost.com/ https://about.mattermost.com/ as a on-premise slack / hipchat / irc alternative (not affiliated with any of those products)
- tajen 10y agoAs long as https://appear.in https://appear.in is independent, I don't care what Google does with Hangouts. Appear.in doesn't even require a login!
- therealmarv 10y agoBut remember that most of the better team collaboration tools are paid and Hangouts is free and works good.
- nottorp 10y agoIs disrupting a large team when google inevitably change their minds worth "free" ?
- therealmarv 10y agoThis is a team/job culture question (but I can understand both sides). For some large teams this is a non brainer and some other teams in other companies will get near heart attacks when this happens ;)
- jtchang 10y agoI don't think I will move any substantial business communication to Google Chat. I'm happy there is competition but Slack nailed it and now google is playing catchup.
- debaserab2 10y agoI don't think Slack really nailed it any better than Google hangouts, other than it's IRC like interface that differentiates it. It's chock full of it's own horrible bugs and problems. I can't even have it open for more than a few hours before it slows my system to a complete halt.
- AaronFriel 10y agoPoe's Law as applied to enterprise messaging platforms. Dear Google, Please make one amazing chat app. Just one. Merge Allo, Duo, Chat, Hangouts, Meet, Messenger, Voice, and your RCS platform into one extensible platform with third party integrations. The comments in this thread? They are not flattering. It is not a sign of joy that people comment on Google releasing a new chat app, or confusing your branding even further. Here's a quick question: I have a friend on Android, I have an iPhone, how do I message them? What's your best solution. What if I want to switch from messaging to voice? What if I want to make a video call? What if I want to invite a third person? iPhones make it easy to transition between different types of communication, and provide useful SMS sync to computers. Slack, Microsoft's Teams, and surprisingly Discord, are all moving in the direction of being a single hub for communication. Admittedly, Slack and Teams don't make it easy (yet) to message people outside your organization. Discord does, and they're beating you to the punch, quelle surprise. All of the above platforms are easy to set up on the web and smartphones. So please, please stop this proliferation. Stop footgunning yourselves on messaging platforms. Build one, make it amazing, and devote resources to making it work for users and organizations.
- NTDF9 10y ago>> Please make one amazing chat app. Just one. Merge Allo, Duo, Chat, Hangouts, Meet, Messenger, Voice, and your RCS platform into one extensible platform with third party integrations. But then how will their under utilized engineers get a promotion?
- ucaetano 10y agoWhy stop there? Gmail is communications as well, so include email too. And snail mail too, so add Fedex/UPS service into it. And fax, we can't forget about fax. But hey, connectivity is just a section of productivity, and docs, slides, sheets, drive is all productivity, so add it all to the same app, as well as google plus. You also use the app store to get your company's apps, so add the play store as well. Finding the destination for a business meeting is also productivity, so add maps inside it as well, and translate, since you might be running meetings and emails in different languages, plus keep for note-taking, calendar, my business, contacts, forms, groups, etc. Congrats, you just designed Lotus Notes. Or Android.
- therealmarv 10y agoLet's wait for the next iteration where they put Duo, Allo, Chat and Meet into one product named "Hangout Next". But I'm happy they do not forget the enterprise... using hangouts nearly every day with slack and /hangout . Still the best quality when you have a global team and sometimes flacky internet or below 300 Kbit/s bandwidth.
- aabajian 10y agoI'll never for Meebo. It just worked, and Google shut it down.
- noja 10y agoFINALLY! What we were all waiting and hoping for: another chat app from the same company.
- jboggan 10y agoThe cynic in me notices that this comes at the same time as Perf season in Google. It's such a bad running joke internally that we have a never-ending multiplication of chat apps that I had to check the calendar to see if today was suddenly April.
- oomkiller 10y agoFrom the comments here you would think there is a negativity competition. Chat and Meet are sorely needed, and make GSuite a viable replacement for heterogenous services: HipChat, Slack, GTM, Zoom, Uberconference, etc. Some organizations have all of these deployed simultaneously, along with GSuite, this is a huge win for easier management and lower cost. You can complain about fragmentation of their chat strategy all day long, but most of the apps mentioned here are designed for consumers, not businesses.
- Macha 10y agoMore wood behind fewer arrows
- pavement 10y agoPah! No delete or edit? Useless.
- bandrami 10y agoWhy does the ghost of Wave keep haunting Mountain View?
- pasbesoin 10y agoI gave up on most Google instant messaging some years ago when the stories appeared about how enabling Hangouts was somewhat of a one-way process, with many people complaining about their existing functionality being hosed in one or another fashion. (E.g. Hangouts wants to take over SMS responsibilities, but borks them.) Google Voice languished, with message forwarding sometimes taking many minutes or even a few hours. Then this year, a new Voice push of some sort was announced, and now message forwarding is mostly back to nearly instantaneous. One fucking product, Google. That works. Fine, add new functionality to it, but don't make me keep chasing down and and installing new apps, wondering whether and how this integrates with what I already have and what is going to get hosed. (By the way, do you guys ever try to use your public help pages, yourself? Hahaha...) So, that little sidebar in Gmail? I'll still use that, when it happens to work and to be convenient. I recently used Hangouts -- setting up an entire account under my domain for the other party -- in a case where Skype had proved to be crap in terms of quality and holding the connection (what they typically use, and what I've refused to use since moving to a new machine). That's about it, for my current Google IM-ish experience. Gmail, I use. Calendar, I use. Docs, I use. They change -- I can keep up with this. Pick a name, and a front door, and leave that the fuck alone. Your schizophrenic branding -- and sometimes dueling functionality -- is not doing you any good, here. Cheers.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nikolay 10y agoI am done with Google! Except for Gmail, which I can't flee, everything else has been a disaster! A disappointment after a disappointment! Apparently, they focus way too much on hiring engineers with their notorious interview process and not on hiring people who can design and deliver sane and practical products! If they weren't a monopolist in search for too long, they'd be long gone!
- webwanderings 10y ago> Running 30-person video conferences Zoom provides 50-person.
- nunez 10y agoDespite Google's confused messaging strategy, I am actually okay with this. This is the clearest indication I've seen of a clear, targetted approach from them on the messaging front. Hangouts was/is amazing for conf calls, so they took that, made it simpler and called it Meet. Hangouts was less awesome for chat, but a lot of people are using it and Slack, so they took the good things from Slack, revamped the chat experience and called it Chat. Their intro explainer has quotes from people in large corporations saying how good it is and scenarios of these products being used for "work things." I like this and hope that it rises in prominence.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- shouyatf 10y agoGuess which will die first?
- amatriain 10y agoThere is a small but vibrant community that uses hangouts video conferencing to play tabletop roleplaying games, with the added bonus of having sessions automatically saved to youtube. There are also people with unmonetized youtube channels that consist of videopodcasts: hangouts video conferences between several people talking about whatever. For these use cases restricting Hangouts Meet to gsuite customers means Hangouts is dead for them. I guess most people will switch to videoconferencing with Skype+OBS and streaming live to Twitch. It will work but it's harder to set up for non technical people. Of course google does not owe me nothing and they can do as they like with their (until now) free product. But it's a pity that these common use cases that were possible with Hangouts are going to be discontinued.
- dfar1 10y agoHonestly, it seems that sometimes Google lives on another planet, and have no idea what their customers want. Here's what all google customer want... they want to see their apps improved and updated, and NOT replaced by more apps. Maybe their plan is... if we make Hangouts worse, than we can make them use Allo and Duo. I know 0 people using those two apps. Even people with Pixel phones are not using it.
- laughfactory 10y agoI can't help but wonder if the comments defending Google's strategy are from paid folks (shills, I suppose). The vast majority of comments are hating on the strategy and then there's a few who are lambasting everyone else and claiming that wanting a single chat app out of Google is paramount to "wanting an app which does everything." Perhaps their Google employees? This is high stakes so I'd expect some attempt to control the damage (I.e., "shape" the conversation).