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I'm really not being a troll here, I'm just confused: Google Talk : what is that? Is that the little box on the left hand side of the page on gmail that lets y

by plg 10y ago

I'm really not being a troll here, I'm just confused: Google Talk : what is that? Is that the little box on the left hand side of the page on gmail that lets you chat with other gmail users? Google Hangouts : different? I know it's videochat but it also has text ... a different thing? The Android/Google phone chat app thingy --- is this different still? obviously I'm not a regular google user at least not of these services

arkitaip 10y ago
We're all confused and whiny wrt to Google's consumer products.
kilroy123 10y ago
We all don't know. They have confused everyone with their messaging apps.
Pxtl 10y ago
Hangouts was until recently, a combined videochat/IM/sms app for desktop and mobile, tied to your google account. If you had a Google Voice service account, it could also be used to send SMS messages from the desktop. But then Google decided they didn't want Hangouts to be that anymore, and are stripping out features to focus it as the "corporate" messenger while they split its functionality into three different Android apps - Allo, Duo, and Messages. So now Hangouts is just a desktop/mobile videochat and IM. No more SMS. And they have a "consumer-oriented" pair of voicechat and IM apps in Duo and Allo. But they're not compatible with Hangouts so if one user uses Hangouts and the other one uses Allo, they can't communicate directly. Google has gone mad.
notatoad 10y ago
I'm confused too. Wasn't Hangouts initially billed as a replacement to Google Talk? I remember my Google Talk chrome extension being replaced automatically by a hangouts extension one day. I thought they discontinued Talk years ago.
sbd01 10y ago
A few years ago, Google integrated a messaging service called Google Talk into Gmail. It was "the little box on the left hand side", as well as a mobile app. A few years later, Google rebranded Talk as Hangouts with a few new features, but for some inane reason left Talk available as a hidden option for those who wanted to use it over Hangouts. Then, just because they felt like it, Google decided to integrate Google Voice, an online phone and text service, into Google Hangouts. This allowed you to make calls or send texts from the Hangouts app to regular phone numbers. To make matters even more confusing, Hangouts also served as an SMS app preinstalled on Nexus phones, which allowed this one app to send texts using Hangouts, Google Voice, or SMS. Because Google has an unhealthily short attention span, they then decided to create an SMS-only app, which was intended to replace the SMS functionality of the Hangouts app. It seems that Google forgot they still had SMS functionality within the Hangouts app until now, and are finally removing it. One would hope that was the end of it, but Google just couldn't make up its mind and released two new messaging and video calling apps, Allo and Duo respectively. Nobody knows what these are for, since Hangouts already has both of these features. They brought nothing new to the table and now are mostly unused. We can only hope that Google decides to focus on one product sometime in the future, but that seems optimistic. For now, Hangouts is their priority, but I imagine that they'll be releasing a new messaging platform in the next year or two.
delecti 10y ago
Near as I can tell, Google Talk was just their name for being able to use Hangouts via XMPP. Or rather, since it came first, Hangouts was their name for the plan to eventually remove support for XMPP.
StuffMaster 10y ago
Google Talk was an instant messaging system that replaced others for many people. It was XMPP so you could use any client with it (Pidgin was popular). It was great because not everybody wants to use web based IM.

by plg 10y ago

arkitaip 10y ago

We're all confused and whiny wrt to Google's consumer products.

kilroy123 10y ago

We all don't know. They have confused everyone with their messaging apps.

Pxtl 10y ago

Hangouts was until recently, a combined videochat/IM/sms app for desktop and mobile, tied to your google account. If you had a Google Voice service account, it could also be used to send SMS messages from the desktop. But then Google decided they didn't want Hangouts to be that anymore, and are stripping out features to focus it as the "corporate" messenger while they split its functionality into three different Android apps - Allo, Duo, and Messages. So now Hangouts is just a desktop/mobile videochat and IM. No more SMS. And they have a "consumer-oriented" pair of voicechat and IM apps in Duo and Allo. But they're not compatible with Hangouts so if one user uses Hangouts and the other one uses Allo, they can't communicate directly. Google has gone mad.

notatoad 10y ago

I'm confused too. Wasn't Hangouts initially billed as a replacement to Google Talk? I remember my Google Talk chrome extension being replaced automatically by a hangouts extension one day. I thought they discontinued Talk years ago.

sbd01 10y ago

A few years ago, Google integrated a messaging service called Google Talk into Gmail. It was "the little box on the left hand side", as well as a mobile app. A few years later, Google rebranded Talk as Hangouts with a few new features, but for some inane reason left Talk available as a hidden option for those who wanted to use it over Hangouts. Then, just because they felt like it, Google decided to integrate Google Voice, an online phone and text service, into Google Hangouts. This allowed you to make calls or send texts from the Hangouts app to regular phone numbers. To make matters even more confusing, Hangouts also served as an SMS app preinstalled on Nexus phones, which allowed this one app to send texts using Hangouts, Google Voice, or SMS. Because Google has an unhealthily short attention span, they then decided to create an SMS-only app, which was intended to replace the SMS functionality of the Hangouts app. It seems that Google forgot they still had SMS functionality within the Hangouts app until now, and are finally removing it. One would hope that was the end of it, but Google just couldn't make up its mind and released two new messaging and video calling apps, Allo and Duo respectively. Nobody knows what these are for, since Hangouts already has both of these features. They brought nothing new to the table and now are mostly unused. We can only hope that Google decides to focus on one product sometime in the future, but that seems optimistic. For now, Hangouts is their priority, but I imagine that they'll be releasing a new messaging platform in the next year or two.

delecti 10y ago

Near as I can tell, Google Talk was just their name for being able to use Hangouts via XMPP. Or rather, since it came first, Hangouts was their name for the plan to eventually remove support for XMPP.

StuffMaster 10y ago

Google Talk was an instant messaging system that replaced others for many people. It was XMPP so you could use any client with it (Pidgin was popular). It was great because not everybody wants to use web based IM.