16 ms·

Google changes its messaging strategy again: Goodbye to Allo, double down on RCS

274 points by Garbage 8y ago

Corrado 8y ago
I think RCS is a great idea and Google should be pushing it. In fact, I would argue that few other companies could make it happen in a way that Google can. RCS opens up a much larger world than a simple "chat" client does.
- sdrothrock 8y ago
  > RCS opens up a much larger world than a simple "chat" client does. How so? It's carrier-specific and thus limited to phones on carriers that support it. What about international messaging, etc.? One of the huge benefits of Hangouts is that I can chat with anyone anywhere, phone or computer, America or Japan.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    I can send SMSs internationally, why not RCS? And you can send & receive SMSs on a computer. The real problem, in my opinion, is cost; Hangouts is free, SMSs aren't. And it seems RCS is designed to be billed per-unit, following the model of the latter.
    - eloisant 8y ago
      In France all carriers give unlimited free SMS. Is it not the case in other countries?
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Here they do, but only if you pay for a plan of over 30€/month. Cheaper plans are limited.
      - dingaling 8y ago
        Not on pay-as-you-go in the UK, where you still pay for every message. 3p each for my plan which doesn't seem much but I easily send over 100 e-mails and IMs every day.
        Chyzwar 8y ago
        Consider changing your plan. I am not paying SMS for a few years already. (in the UK)
      - ferongr 8y ago
        Not in Greece.
  - tscs37 8y ago
    If RCS is not supported, the metadata is stripped and it arrives as a normal SMS at the destination. It doesn't require support from the carrier AFAICT.
- LaGrange 8y ago
  > I think RCS is a great idea and Google should be pushing it. There is no end-to-end encryption, so no, it's not.
sabujp 8y ago
but does it use encryption?
- Dawny33 8y ago
  It better does. Else, we'd be opening ourselves for a China-like chat ecosystem which is very dangerous.
- praneshp 8y ago
  The verge puff piece about RCS specifically called out that messages are _not_ end to end encrypted.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - geeostation 8y ago
    without end to end encryption. this is doa
    - majewsky 8y ago
      Except for 99% of users who sadly don't give a shit about E2E.
Dawny33 8y ago
Why isn't Google doubling down on marketing Allo on Android? They already have a huge ecosystem in Android, which no other company other than Apple has.
- Arnt 8y ago
  What has Google ever really marketed? Google's basic strategy seems to be to throw shit on the wall and see what sticks.
  - enitihas 8y ago
    Google+ was heavily marketed though.
    - dannyw 8y ago
      And it didn’t work. What makes you think it’ll work this time?
      - majewsky 8y ago
        Chrome was also heavily marketed, and that worked just fine.
        xab9 8y ago
        Because it's good. When firefox started slowly killing xul and the clusterfuck called IE stopped being the top (rabid) dog, a new kid had to come along. Google+ seemed like an afterthought, a way to create a facebook clone without creating a facebook clone.
        enitihas 8y ago
        Google+ was given the most importance of any project within Google as far as I know.
johnchristopher 8y ago
> Microsoft is among the OEM supporters, which raises the possibility it could bring support to Windows 10, but the company was non-committal when The Verge pressed it on that possibility. If windows phone is dead I suppose this would "just" enabled some kind of SMS messaging on a win10 desktop ?
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Microsoft's been pushing Always Connected PCs, which, as far as I'm aware, have SMS/MMS capabilities. But the rumored Surface Phone is also still on the horizon with Windows on ARM, the whole foldable phone thing, etc. Microsoft is not going to just give up on mobile, but they realized their existing strategy wasn't working. (I think abandoning the share they did have was a mistake, mind you, just like Google repeatedly dumping chat products.)
- ryl00 8y ago
  SMS is already available on Win10 desktop, but it's confusing to setup (I think it involves tying your SMS messages to Skype on Win10 mobile, at which point you can see and reply to SMS via Cortana on your desktop)
tallanvor 8y ago
Can anyone explain why I should be interested in RCS, though? It seems like it's more designed to let carriers try and stem the flow of customers switching to other options, and I don't really see what benefits it offers me.
- aiiane 8y ago
  The closest thing to a standards-based, non-walled-garden option that has the possibility of widespread adoption?
  - oh-kumudo 8y ago
    Only being deprecated 1.5 years later?
  - hvidgaard 8y ago
    Like XMPP that Google abandoned? The solution is hardly to create a new standard, but improve in existing, perhaps rewrite them to address fundamental issues. But if it's meant to be used collaboratively, it should be developed collaboratively.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    XMPP is already that, and Google Talk supported it until they found it inconvenient/got enough userbase and removed the gateway & support.
- bb88 8y ago
  Years ago 1998ish(?), there was a fight to open up chat applications AIM, ICQ, YIM, etc. We had to have 20 apps to chat with each other. Fast forward 20 years, and here we are again, FB Messenger, Kik, WhatsApp, Allo, Signal, Telegram, SMS, Slack, etc. At least this appears to be a "standard" that everyone can use again.
  - underwater 8y ago
    Why would any of those products get onboard, unless they’re already failing?
guessmyname 8y ago
I am starting to believe that these "new chat projects from Google" are actually all the same one with a different name to keep, whatever work they are doing, alive. I heard some time ago from the colleague who got an internship at Google that they have to release a new project almost every 3 months and then fight against other internal teams to do a public release. This way they — mostly interns — can justify a full-time contract. At the same time, because these projects also need a project manager, some high profile engineers help the interns in order to get bonuses and also to justify a change of responsibilities to, maybe, become full time engineering managers. Whatever the story behind the chat re-brands is, many will agree with me that this is becoming irritating.
polskibus 8y ago
Long time ago, Google chat supported XMPP. Later on that support has been cut off. How do they expect people to trust this statement: "We don’t believe in taking the approach that Apple does. We are fundamentally an open ecosystem. We believe in working with partners. We believe in working with our OEMs to be able to deliver a great experience,” ?
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  It’s funny because they squashed open standards when they were the big player and then push for open standards when they’ve lost market share. I wish companies believed in open standards for the value they bring to society, rather than selectively supporting them based on competitive interests.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    I think there is a pattern with Google: Social network: Orkut was their one and only working social network. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. Messenger: Talk was their one and only working messenger. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. Photo blog: Picasa was their one and only working photo blog. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. New site: Reader was their one and only working news portal. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. Casual blog: Blogger was their one and only working casual blogging site. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. -- Google Photos is such a faceless product to the extend you get surprised time after time again to the fact of its existence when you see it popping up under different names after firmware updates. Picasa was a photoblog, something with essence, community, and vaguely stated purpose. Photos, on the other hand... well, just a file dumpster with UI.
    - andybak 8y ago
dandare 8y ago
I don't see a single reason to invest myself into Google messaging product once again. I was adamant gtalk/hangout user but you can only fuck me over so many times.
- andybak 8y ago
  I've actually just quietly gone on using hangouts and ignored whatever strategy statements they make. It's not perfect but it still works and I see no reason to stop.
  - jsight 8y ago
    Yeah, me too. It is definitely better than all of their other choices.
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    ...which is exactly why the service will get shut down. "We made something, but people wanted to use that! Kill it, kill it with fire!!!"
- seabrookmx 8y ago
  To be fair, the migration from Talk to Hangouts was pretty smooth, and Hangouts still works. Google gave up pushing Hangouts for consumers but I don't think it's going anywhere, as it's a big part of G-suite for corporate customers. Though with Slack and Discord I'm sure it's usage isn't as strong as it once was.
  - stephenr 8y ago
    > the migration from Talk to Hangouts was pretty smooth I take it you never used google talk via xmpp.
    - seabrookmx 8y ago
      I did actually. They kept the XMPP compat running for quite a while after, so for me Pidgin and my old blackberry GTalk app kept working. Eventually they shut it down though, but in an uncharacteristic move they gave quite a bit of lead time.
flukus 8y ago
Google is sick of missing out on all that data mining it can do in the private messenger space. When the worlds largest spyware company supports something you have to look at why.
pmlnr 8y ago
So Google wants SMS to go the Gmail way... how about leaving existing, working standards alone, google? You're already breaking email, which is bad enough.
- kcmp 8y ago
  An article from the verge mentioned that people were moving away from texting and are instead using services like imessage and fb messenger that restricted carriers from controlling text messaging. Carriers could either change or they could watch their control of texting slip away. This option satisfies the desire of carriers to keep their control and google's desire to fix the messaging experience on Android
  - numbsafari 8y ago
    ... and nary a mention of users. I do think this is Google's biggest weakness. They don't see the end-users of any of their products as their customers and they don't seem to have developed the corporate infrastructure to start doing that any time soon.
throwaway899 8y ago
I would really love that we all start using some open chat standard (Like XMPP) so WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. could talk to each other. Or something like email, you could have foo@whatsapp.com or foo@telegram.org and that would be your 'chat address' and all clients could talk to each other
- SamWhited 8y ago
  Even if it weren't federated (though I do miss Google Talk), there would still be some value in using an open standard. If I can only afford a feature phone, there are XMPP clients for it (or they can be developed relatively easily), even if I don't get all the features. Using open standards, even if you don't make the service open, still makes you more inclusive and helps a lot of people who would otherwise be shut out of your service.
- jhasse 8y ago
  so ... XMPP?
eigenvector 8y ago
RCS is an improvement to SMS but it does not address the core limitations: it is owned and controlled by carriers, so your ability to contact someone is entirely dependent on that user's carrier. It is tied to a single, physical device. WhatsApp shot to popularity because it was the opposite of SMS: an entirely over-the-top service that everyone could use, on any platform, without the consent, extra billing or buggy implementation of their carrier. As an app, it could be installed on the widest imaginable array of devices - including the obsolete, crappy ones that most of the people on Earth use - without OS updates. I don't need stickers or Google Assistant. Those things are nice, but they're not what I need. What I need is the ability to contact anyone, anywhere without having to wonder whether it's going to work when I hit 'send'. Hi Bob, did you get my photo? Sorry, it didn't go through, Bob's carrier in Bangladesh has set limits on photo size and mine was too big. I tried to send Raj a message, but he recently got an iPhone and my RCS message sent as SMS and his carrier blocks international SMS messages. WhatsApp & FB Messenger (and to a lesser extent iMessage) are successful because they reduce the thousands of carriers and hundreds of countries in the world to a single, seamless service. RCS is taking us back to the days where a single obstructionist carrier (remember lots of carriers are owned or controlled by governments) can screw things up for all of their users. WhatsApp et al showcased the ability of the Internet to make the world a smaller place. I don't Google understands how big or complex the world really is.
- eloisant 8y ago
  Frankly, I'd rather have a messaging system controlled by carriers but distributed among all of them (like SMS and RCS) than a messaging system fully controlled by a single company like Whatsapp, Telegram, Allo, iMessages and so on. I can still switch carriers and be able to communicate with my friends. The only issue I have with SMS is that it costs money when I'm not in my home country.
  - eigenvector 8y ago
    Re. being able to switch carriers and still communicate, what happens when you travel and (temporarily) get a local SIM? Are you suddenly messaging all your existing contacts from an unrecognized foreign number "Hi, it's John, this is my temporary Thai number..." and then relying on that message not getting binned by some spam algorithm? What prevents carriers from charging extra for RCS messages originating abroad?
galadran 8y ago
No end to end encryption = no interest. If I use this to communicate with a business (or person!), the carrier can read every word. No thanks. Hell. You can't even download the standards documents without giving GSMA a name and address and consenting to receive promotional material...
- lifthrasiir 8y ago
  Oh. Thank you for pointing that out. I thought that Allo supports E2E so will chat, but that was my sloppy reading of The Verge article [1]: > But, like SMS, Chat won’t be end-to-end encrypted, and it will follow the same legal intercept standards. In other words: it won’t be as secure as iMessage or Signal. Dammit. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-m...
baybal2 8y ago
Was it their 12th attempt? I think they have to think about finally changing their product manager.
- stevedonovan 8y ago
  Perhaps the problem is that they are _constantly_ changing their product managers.
salimmadjd 8y ago
If I was to summarize the problem of Google is this: Google does not hire entrepreneurs. They're great at hiring engineers. They're great at hiring MBAs from top business schools. But their hiring process does not leave room for unusual rouge entrepreneurial people. I mentioned this to a person whose company was bought by FB and later became an investor. He agreed and he said, he was interviewed by google but they didn't hire him. So he started his company and a few years later sold it to FB. I know this in anecdotal. But I think Google just lacks the entrepreneurial blood. Someone to hustle a product with a cohesive strategy and vision and finding the way to build it up and turn it into a massive success.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  I think the issue is they want too hard to be seen as entrepreneurs. They are always reinventing the same products rather than just improving what they have. I'd go so far as to say, Google would benefit from a two-year ban on any new product releases. Engineers should spend that time focused on adding value to their current products.
cryptos 8y ago
I hope that this approach fails dramatically! Building such an infrastructure without end-to-end encryption is a crime.
Rjevski 8y ago
RCS is shit. It’s a good idea in theory, but in practice it’s a crappy, over-engineered clone of iMessage or WhatsApp without any of the good parts like end to end encryption or spam protections. It relies on the carriers to keep it functional and we all know this won’t end well... given the robocall and SMS spam situation do you really think RCS will be any different? But at least robocalls and SMS spam cant carry anything besides plain text, while RCS could contain HTML and a lot more “active” stuff which no doubt will exploit some bugs in the phone’s implementation to install malware.
- mtve 8y ago
  This is absolutely true. And as has been said in other threads, Google Talk was the only sane strategy for Google and it was lost.
blueside 8y ago
Sometimes it's hard to believe that Google's course of action and decision making to messaging isn't satire. I can't imagine what a dumpster fire must be going on somewhere within, eventually I hope we get to hear the stories behind their calamity of multifarious messaging products. I'm not even being facetious when I say that they should include an estimated date of when they expect to cease supporting said product (2 years seems to be about right)
fauigerzigerk 8y ago
Every time there is a choice to make for Google on messaging they predictably make the wrong one. How on earth can you control the most widely used OS on the planet and not be able to capture some market share without handing more power to operators?
- rrdharan 8y ago
  The (not-so-)secret is, they don’t control it.
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    What exactly does Google not control that prevents them from pushing one high quality messaging app that is independent of network operators? What control do network operators have over Android? Device and SOC makers do indeed have some control over Android. But that is unrelated to Google's messaging mess.
arpit 8y ago
Will this now now third party services will be able to send rich messages to a phone number? This could be a good or a bad thing. I occasionally get random messages from my carrier or ad spammers, not looking forward to them including images or media in those. On the flip side, if you are a startup, you would be able to send rich messages to your clients without having to integrate Facebook messenger, Whatsapp etc etc
hiven 8y ago
Not only do they keep cancelling chat projects but this one isn’t even end to end encrypted. What’s the point. Either release a superior product or just let it go.
exabrial 8y ago
The carriers are idiots. It's where innovation goes to die. We had to pull them kicking and screaming into the smart phone and data era. (Remember When AT&T sent a paper copy of every image you downloaded on your iPhone in a bill?) Quite frankly the core problem with Google's strategy is involving then at all. Instead, go the manufacturers and campaign against supporting sms at all. It's insecure, slow, unreliable, monitored, among many other things. Push the manufacturers to an open Android messaging api that runs over TLS (or double ratchet) and bypasses the carriers completely, but the manufacturers can still rebrand. The other issue is Apple. For as much as they claim "privacy is a human right", they have been jerks about making sure iMessage drags it's feet using secure technologies to communicate outside of their ecosystem. Apple wants to ride a white horse on encryption, but in reality they're having an opposite, negative, effect on the vast majority of the world's population.
- jimktrains2 8y ago
  > Quite frankly the core problem with Google's strategy is involving then at all. Instead, go the manufacturers and campaign against supporting sms at all. It's insecure, slow, unreliable, monitored, among many other things. Push the manufacturers to an open Android messaging api that runs over TLS (or double ratchet) and bypasses the carriers completely, but the manufacturers can still rebrand. But it's universal. I would never buy a phone that doesn't support sms. How do I contact people with flip phones? People with iPhones? Also, Gchat is "monitored" as much as sms. Imessage claims it's not, but has that/can that be verified?
  - sethhochberg 8y ago
    Its both universal _and_ relies on the voice network rather than the data network (if the device even has one). SMS is a fundamental part of the GSM spec, has been for over 30 years, and is one of those super lightweight battle-tested technologies that there are certainly some pretty great IP-based alternatives to, but which replacing wholesale for some yet-another-IP-based-rebranded-messanger seems crazy. The beauty of SMS riding on the voice network is that it gives you redundancy. Phone doesn't have a data signal, but can get voice? SMS still works. Until we live in a world where GSM and friends are dead and everything everywhere is VoLTE, SMS still has a place as a fallback. I'm always a little surprised to come into HN comment threads about SMS and see so many people rallying for its replacement, yet we go into a thread about Slack and see many of the same arguments being made to defend IRC, etc.
elvirs 8y ago
Its shocking how Google is embarrassing itself with these incompatible chat apps released one after another and abandoned right after the release. GTalk Gmail Chat Google Voice Hangouts Android Messages Allo Duo for fucks sake Google, just copy Whatsapp but make it stored on cloud, not on the device, like FB Messenger. Enable account recovery using email in addition to sms and enable usernames or email in addition phone number to add contacts. Thats pretty much all you need to do to beat the competition thanks to your android influence
- sorenjan 8y ago
  They recently added a chat function to the Youtube mobile app too.
- mynameisvlad 8y ago
  Google Voice and Duo are not messaging apps. GTalk, Hangouts, and GMail Chat are the same thing at different iterations and were therefore fully compatible with one another. If you're going to criticize Google for this, at least be correct when doing it.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    Google Talk was federated and could chat with people who had accounts other Google, so it feels a bit unfair to lump that in. It's like saying "Gmail is compatible with hypothetical Gmail where you can only send emails to other Gmail users, it's just a different iteration." Maybe true, but suddenly a very different service.
  - sykh 8y ago
    You make a good point but also make a broader, negative point against Google. OP's incorrectness is evidence that Google is obfuscating the purpose of their products. There’s a bewildering amount of names and products. At some point fatigue sets in for casual users/observers and everything starts to get lumped in together. I’m not going to sort it out and so in my mind these are all messaging apps. Apparently Google is trying to do something in the communication space involving voice and text. It doesnt seem to be working and it’s ended up confusing a lot of people.
tosh 8y ago
Great example of how expensive it becomes over time to name (almost) every product you create "Brand" + x. Google is eroding trust in its product offering & regularly adding an adoption handicap to their whole product portfolio. P&G, Unilever et al know this. I'd expect the software companies to learn from the challenges of the "supermarket"-era brands.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  The tradeoff: - Add "Google" before the name any product announcement, and it's sure to be front page news[1]. - Shutdown any product with "Google" before the name, and it's sure to be front page news. [1]You can especially see this effect when a random Googler publishes a random project, but it's under github.com/google/ because it was done at work. Even if it's not "a Google product", it'll shoot up to the top of HN.
calypso 8y ago
But I just convinced my wife to start using Allo...
moksha256 8y ago
Didn't Google have messaging figured out with Google Talk? Everyone was on Gmail all day (as many still are) and people actually used it. Then they let it wither, came out with Hangouts, and it's been a downhill train wreck from there. Google Talk had the potential of being one of the biggest messengers in the world...they own Gmail and Android (!!!!!). Are you kidding me? There's really no good reason for them NOT to be in a hugely dominant position here. But instead they screwed it up & left a gaping hole in the marketplace.
- pilom 8y ago
  One of the best features of using Google Fi as my cell provider is that I can still use Google Talk. Still works amazingly well and I can send text messages directly from Gmail or from my android phone. I love it.
  - chatmasta 8y ago
    I can do this and I don’t have project fi. I’ve got a google voice number from a long time ago, and I can text from that number via Hangouts in gmail or on mobile.
    - sli 8y ago
      Yeah, same. Hell, as a kid, I'd use GVoice really often just to send texts when I had wifi but no cell signal, or had a device without cell service (like a tablet). Saved me a couple times when I was younger and, say, ran out of toilet paper.
  - jcomis 8y ago
    pushbullet (plus a few other apps) also recreate this functionality. Buggy and it's $5/month but I really use the hell out of it.
  - JshWright 8y ago
    I was a Fi user for about a year, but had major issues getting the phone to switch back to the cell network when I left my house. We live in a little valley with poor reception, so the phone seemed to "give up" on cell service, and then I'd have to reboot it after I left my house to get it to reconnect (wifi calling worked fine while I was home).
wnevets 8y ago
I miss google talk so much. Stupid fast and very clean UI.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
49bc 8y ago
> Unlike Apple, RCS is designed to work with carriers who can develop their own messaging apps that work with the protocol No no no please. We should be doing everything we can to relegate carriers to “dumb” data providers. They don’t have he skills or expertise to provide anything beyond this, which they’ve demonstrated time and again.
ibdf 8y ago
They don't get it. People don't want new apps, they want improved versions of the app they already have. It takes so much time to adopt and adapt to an app... nobody I know uses Allo. I have a google phone and I don't use it, because no one else uses. Allo has so many interesting features but I can't use them if no one else uses the damn app. I don't have an iphone nor want one, but they got it right when it comes to building upon their core software. Same can be said to Windows/Microsoft. Yes, they are not perfect, yes sometimes behind everyone else when it comes to "the latest and greatest", but they have USERS! They know their audience and slowly improve their apps to keep them happy enough to keep using it. I can't believe a company this big with so many resources doesn't have an attention spam greater than 6 months.
- scottinseattle 8y ago
  By that definition, they do get it. Because RCS is an improved version of the Messages inbox already in the phone. No need to take any time to adopt and adapt to any new program.
owaislone 8y ago
That's it. I'm giving up on Google chat products. I tried hard to use Allo and get my friends to use but enough. We need a new XMPP like protocol that prioritizes privacy, end-to-end encryption and supports all the fancy features like stickers and video calls to make it easier to adopt. Does anything like this exist?
- selectodude 8y ago
  iMessage
  - owaislone 8y ago
    Is iMessage XMPP like open protocol?
    - SamWhited 8y ago
      iMessage is XMPP isn't it (although a somewhat outdated version of the protocol)? It was the last time I checked, but I don't have a device capable of running it so that was a while ago. If it's not anymore I'd be curious to know what they replaced it with.
      - owaislone 8y ago
        I did not know that. I thought it was a locked down messaging network on Apple devices could get on (plus some SMS). Does that mean another service speaking XMPP can exchange messages with an iMessage user? Edit: According to Wikipedia, it's based on APNs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage
skywhopper 8y ago
This is weird but I have to assume it’s a political sop to the carriers to get something from them. The PR is disingenuous of course, but I’m more disappointed in the reporter for failing to mention a big advantage of iMessage and a reason lots of people choose WhatsApp are because not only do they provide a better experience than SMS but they are (at least they attempt to be) secure. No federated messaging system that involves the carriers will be end-to-end secure or provide easy syncing across clients.
d3v4n5h 8y ago
Check out this video by The Verge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCh-qRYMAKk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCh-qRYMAKk
mindcrime 8y ago
So, after all this time, the best approach to interoperable messaging is still XMPP. Google, carriers, etc. should just drop ALL of this non-standardized crapola, bundle an (optimized, efficient, well-written) XMPP client with Android and call it a day.
apeace 8y ago
> WhatsApp benefitted from being a first mover — all the other early leaders in Western markets are nowhere to be seen today Has Signal ever released numbers on active users? My anecdata on this is that ALL of my friends use Signal--and not because I use it or because as their tech-savvy friend I told them they should use it. I just started seeing them show up in Signal over the last year. I get the feeling that Signal may have a massive user base nobody really knows about, because they don't publish these numbers. Anybody know?
- Markoff 8y ago
  any chance most of your friends are males interested in IT? though i was surprised or building manager and guy fixing my plumbing are on Signal, only two other people besides those i convinced and one three friends working in IT
thrillgore 8y ago
I'm disappointed but not surprised by this development.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
For me, nothing demonstrates how self defeating Google's internal structure is, than chat. They had a lot of adoption of their system in the early 2000's (and granted it became unmaintainable but that was an engineering issue not a technical issue) and they killed it. They had a great system they could have copied (iMessage) and they ignored it. They had a standards friendly system and they spurned it. The combination of killing gchat and reader really struck me as "Wow, it feels this company has no idea what they are doing strategically."
periferral 8y ago
The problem with Allo and Duo and other "chat" tools google provided never felt feature complete. If I'm on my mobile phone, I want one app to get messages regardless if it comes from the carrier or my peeps on google. Hangouts is the closest thing we have to this. Even hangouts doesnt fully integrate. I'm a Fi user and when use apps that send text to verify, the autoverify doesnt work with Hangouts as my default messaging app. It only seems to work with Android Messaging app. These kind of half baked reasons are why none of the google messaging apps really have taken off. I agree with the past comment that Google had the opp to just improve on Google Talk and build on it rather than create 6 different messaging apps.
lanius 8y ago
I'd love for this to get widely adopted if it can remove the pain points around sending images through SMS/MMS. I have no confidence that recipients ever actually receive the images I text them.
throwawaymacmac 8y ago
I'm trying to be blunt here, thus the throwaway account. This has nothing to do with Google's messenger strategy (they have none, or actually, they don't really care), it's all about employees seeking promotions by releasing a "influential" project with "impacts" to get promotions. Now all the promotions are done, what's the incentive to keep it? Here's an idea, how about automatic revocation of all promotions if your project is nixed within a year?
45h34jh53k4j 8y ago
Hell no, Its like google has absolutely NO CLUE. The carriers are EVIL. You do NOT want them to have visibility of your messaging data. I really cant believe we are even discussing this in 2018. EVERY SINGLE MESSAGING PROVIDER WITH ANY CLUE IS END TO END. Google 2018 -- hey lets get the carriers to implement a clear text messaging protocol, surely after 30 years of abuse they wont mess up this time. Pathetic.
mxuribe 8y ago
Let me start by stating that i'm biased in favor of the matrix protocol...I don't see why google doesn't simply adopt matrix as its protocol and build a messaging client on top of that? Here are the benefits as i see them: * The foundations of the basic matrix protocol are already built - so google can simply augment existing efforts and contribute to the project. And, they don't have to wrestle with carriers. (Any help for the matrix team seems to be good thing to me!) * While, yes, most users wouldn't want to pay for such a chat service, google could tie this new chat service into their free gmail offering. I'm disgusted by my next statement, but i guess they could subsidize this for free users by displaying small text ads - just like in gmail - within the context of whatever matrix-compatible chat client they build. * Plus, they can tie it into their Google Apps for business - or is it now called G suite? - and companies who DO pay for the greater G suite service will simply gain an additional enterprise messaging service which is similar conceptually to slack, and be available for enterprises as private server instances. Google could monetize this by adding a few cents to the monthly fees GSuite users already pay. * By virtue of leveraging a decentralized/federated protocol like matrix - the users of google's matrix instances - either from the free or paid GSuite services - can STILL chat with users from other matrix server instances....not so differently in concept to gmail users emailing with non-gmail users. The cool thing about gchat back in the day was its support of xmpp, which i imagined help gchat's network effect...matrix could do the same here and now. Maybe I'm missing something...but as smart as the people at google seem to be, I'm constantly dumbfounded by their chat/messaging strategies. Ah, well.
georgeecollins 8y ago
Calling this a strategy is a stretch.
niftich 8y ago
In my opinion, the strategy behind this particular change is actually a lot more clear than some of their past ones [1]. Allo didn't gain significant ground and failed to displace WhatsApp, so they can't fight Facebook on that front. Instead, they've conceded the phonenumber-as-indentity over-the-top-messenger market, and have pivoted to something more fundamental: the humble SMS app, and SMS itself. They're baking all their Google Assistant hooks into the default Android SMS app, which will make it harder to avoid -- something Google definitely wants. This way, they don't have to fight Facebook and WeChat and Viber and Telegram on their competencies, because they've sidestepped them with the power of defaults for some amount of users, which will be a problem for the competition later on. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483
satysin 8y ago
SMS works because it is universal. RCS is just another network operator based messaging service with some new features. Who the fuck wants that?! What I want is a chat system that does not rely on a mobile operator to "enable" it and that works like e-mail (in that I can pick any own service provider to store my messages, deliver them, etc.) and offers E2EE, etc. It is 2018, we shouldn't be dealing with phone numbers for messaging when everyone has a much easier to remember email address. Honestly iMessage would be god damn perfect if it were open and you could use your own provider (or run your own).
prepend 8y ago
My cynical take. Phones are tied to identies and using google chat means that real people are linked to all their google activity. That is a extremely valuable for Google. So IM tied to phones is great for them. GoogleTalk and chat that allows internet only is not very valuable to Google. Since it’s trivial to have a chat protocol work well with carriers and browsers and everything else, Occum’s Razor says Google did it for money. By allowing anonymous accounts like gtalk and jabber and such, it makes their ad pool worse. They could go freemium and just ignore those less valuable accounts that aren’t tied to a phone. But instead save the 1000 engineer hours or whatever to not have to support non-phone based chat.
jg24 8y ago
Will having a new standard kill companies like Twilio? How will it affect them?
- jg24 8y ago
  Twilio makes probably about half of their revenue from SMS
Havoc 8y ago
Don't think doing something different every month counts as a "strategy".
indigodaddy 8y ago
Are there any chat/messaging alternatives in the dat/ipfs/beakerbrowser space?
bullen 8y ago
SMTP is my bet, let’s dust off the old spam can! https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-m...
Zigurd 8y ago
If it is RCS, it will be interoperable messaging, which is something the world needs. But I rely on Hangouts and the fact that I can have calls to my Google Voice number ring as a Hangouts voice call. I hope there is a reasonable migration path that does not force me to give up important capabilities.
toddh 8y ago
Not git? That's so off trend.

274 points by Garbage 8y ago

I think RCS is a great idea and Google should be pushing it. In fact, I would argue that few other companies could make it happen in a way that Google can. RCS opens up a much larger world than a simple "chat" client does.

sdrothrock 8y ago
> RCS opens up a much larger world than a simple "chat" client does. How so? It's carrier-specific and thus limited to phones on carriers that support it. What about international messaging, etc.? One of the huge benefits of Hangouts is that I can chat with anyone anywhere, phone or computer, America or Japan.
- icebraining 8y ago
  I can send SMSs internationally, why not RCS? And you can send & receive SMSs on a computer. The real problem, in my opinion, is cost; Hangouts is free, SMSs aren't. And it seems RCS is designed to be billed per-unit, following the model of the latter.
  - eloisant 8y ago
    In France all carriers give unlimited free SMS. Is it not the case in other countries?
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Here they do, but only if you pay for a plan of over 30€/month. Cheaper plans are limited.
    - dingaling 8y ago
      Not on pay-as-you-go in the UK, where you still pay for every message. 3p each for my plan which doesn't seem much but I easily send over 100 e-mails and IMs every day.
      - Chyzwar 8y ago
        Consider changing your plan. I am not paying SMS for a few years already. (in the UK)
    - ferongr 8y ago
      Not in Greece.
- tscs37 8y ago
  If RCS is not supported, the metadata is stripped and it arrives as a normal SMS at the destination. It doesn't require support from the carrier AFAICT.
LaGrange 8y ago
> I think RCS is a great idea and Google should be pushing it. There is no end-to-end encryption, so no, it's not.

sabujp 8y ago

but does it use encryption?

Dawny33 8y ago
It better does. Else, we'd be opening ourselves for a China-like chat ecosystem which is very dangerous.
praneshp 8y ago
The verge puff piece about RCS specifically called out that messages are _not_ end to end encrypted.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- geeostation 8y ago
  without end to end encryption. this is doa
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Except for 99% of users who sadly don't give a shit about E2E.

Dawny33 8y ago

Why isn't Google doubling down on marketing Allo on Android? They already have a huge ecosystem in Android, which no other company other than Apple has.

Arnt 8y ago
What has Google ever really marketed? Google's basic strategy seems to be to throw shit on the wall and see what sticks.
- enitihas 8y ago
  Google+ was heavily marketed though.
  - dannyw 8y ago
    And it didn’t work. What makes you think it’ll work this time?
    - majewsky 8y ago
      Chrome was also heavily marketed, and that worked just fine.
      - xab9 8y ago
        Because it's good. When firefox started slowly killing xul and the clusterfuck called IE stopped being the top (rabid) dog, a new kid had to come along. Google+ seemed like an afterthought, a way to create a facebook clone without creating a facebook clone.
        enitihas 8y ago
        Google+ was given the most importance of any project within Google as far as I know.

johnchristopher 8y ago

> Microsoft is among the OEM supporters, which raises the possibility it could bring support to Windows 10, but the company was non-committal when The Verge pressed it on that possibility. If windows phone is dead I suppose this would "just" enabled some kind of SMS messaging on a win10 desktop ?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Microsoft's been pushing Always Connected PCs, which, as far as I'm aware, have SMS/MMS capabilities. But the rumored Surface Phone is also still on the horizon with Windows on ARM, the whole foldable phone thing, etc. Microsoft is not going to just give up on mobile, but they realized their existing strategy wasn't working. (I think abandoning the share they did have was a mistake, mind you, just like Google repeatedly dumping chat products.)
ryl00 8y ago
SMS is already available on Win10 desktop, but it's confusing to setup (I think it involves tying your SMS messages to Skype on Win10 mobile, at which point you can see and reply to SMS via Cortana on your desktop)

tallanvor 8y ago

Can anyone explain why I should be interested in RCS, though? It seems like it's more designed to let carriers try and stem the flow of customers switching to other options, and I don't really see what benefits it offers me.

aiiane 8y ago
The closest thing to a standards-based, non-walled-garden option that has the possibility of widespread adoption?
- oh-kumudo 8y ago
  Only being deprecated 1.5 years later?
- hvidgaard 8y ago
  Like XMPP that Google abandoned? The solution is hardly to create a new standard, but improve in existing, perhaps rewrite them to address fundamental issues. But if it's meant to be used collaboratively, it should be developed collaboratively.
- masklinn 8y ago
  XMPP is already that, and Google Talk supported it until they found it inconvenient/got enough userbase and removed the gateway & support.
bb88 8y ago
Years ago 1998ish(?), there was a fight to open up chat applications AIM, ICQ, YIM, etc. We had to have 20 apps to chat with each other. Fast forward 20 years, and here we are again, FB Messenger, Kik, WhatsApp, Allo, Signal, Telegram, SMS, Slack, etc. At least this appears to be a "standard" that everyone can use again.
- underwater 8y ago
  Why would any of those products get onboard, unless they’re already failing?

guessmyname 8y ago

I am starting to believe that these "new chat projects from Google" are actually all the same one with a different name to keep, whatever work they are doing, alive. I heard some time ago from the colleague who got an internship at Google that they have to release a new project almost every 3 months and then fight against other internal teams to do a public release. This way they — mostly interns — can justify a full-time contract. At the same time, because these projects also need a project manager, some high profile engineers help the interns in order to get bonuses and also to justify a change of responsibilities to, maybe, become full time engineering managers. Whatever the story behind the chat re-brands is, many will agree with me that this is becoming irritating.

polskibus 8y ago

Long time ago, Google chat supported XMPP. Later on that support has been cut off. How do they expect people to trust this statement: "We don’t believe in taking the approach that Apple does. We are fundamentally an open ecosystem. We believe in working with partners. We believe in working with our OEMs to be able to deliver a great experience,” ?

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
It’s funny because they squashed open standards when they were the big player and then push for open standards when they’ve lost market share. I wish companies believed in open standards for the value they bring to society, rather than selectively supporting them based on competitive interests.
- baybal2 8y ago
  I think there is a pattern with Google: Social network: Orkut was their one and only working social network. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. Messenger: Talk was their one and only working messenger. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. Photo blog: Picasa was their one and only working photo blog. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. New site: Reader was their one and only working news portal. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. Casual blog: Blogger was their one and only working casual blogging site. Google - it is not great, so we raze it to the ground and make a better product... and they were trying to do so for last 12 years. -- Google Photos is such a faceless product to the extend you get surprised time after time again to the fact of its existence when you see it popping up under different names after firmware updates. Picasa was a photoblog, something with essence, community, and vaguely stated purpose. Photos, on the other hand... well, just a file dumpster with UI.
  - andybak 8y ago

dandare 8y ago

I don't see a single reason to invest myself into Google messaging product once again. I was adamant gtalk/hangout user but you can only fuck me over so many times.

andybak 8y ago
I've actually just quietly gone on using hangouts and ignored whatever strategy statements they make. It's not perfect but it still works and I see no reason to stop.
- jsight 8y ago
  Yeah, me too. It is definitely better than all of their other choices.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  ...which is exactly why the service will get shut down. "We made something, but people wanted to use that! Kill it, kill it with fire!!!"
seabrookmx 8y ago
To be fair, the migration from Talk to Hangouts was pretty smooth, and Hangouts still works. Google gave up pushing Hangouts for consumers but I don't think it's going anywhere, as it's a big part of G-suite for corporate customers. Though with Slack and Discord I'm sure it's usage isn't as strong as it once was.
- stephenr 8y ago
  > the migration from Talk to Hangouts was pretty smooth I take it you never used google talk via xmpp.
  - seabrookmx 8y ago
    I did actually. They kept the XMPP compat running for quite a while after, so for me Pidgin and my old blackberry GTalk app kept working. Eventually they shut it down though, but in an uncharacteristic move they gave quite a bit of lead time.

flukus 8y ago

Google is sick of missing out on all that data mining it can do in the private messenger space. When the worlds largest spyware company supports something you have to look at why.

pmlnr 8y ago

So Google wants SMS to go the Gmail way... how about leaving existing, working standards alone, google? You're already breaking email, which is bad enough.

kcmp 8y ago
An article from the verge mentioned that people were moving away from texting and are instead using services like imessage and fb messenger that restricted carriers from controlling text messaging. Carriers could either change or they could watch their control of texting slip away. This option satisfies the desire of carriers to keep their control and google's desire to fix the messaging experience on Android
- numbsafari 8y ago
  ... and nary a mention of users. I do think this is Google's biggest weakness. They don't see the end-users of any of their products as their customers and they don't seem to have developed the corporate infrastructure to start doing that any time soon.

throwaway899 8y ago

I would really love that we all start using some open chat standard (Like XMPP) so WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. could talk to each other. Or something like email, you could have foo@whatsapp.com or foo@telegram.org and that would be your 'chat address' and all clients could talk to each other

SamWhited 8y ago
Even if it weren't federated (though I do miss Google Talk), there would still be some value in using an open standard. If I can only afford a feature phone, there are XMPP clients for it (or they can be developed relatively easily), even if I don't get all the features. Using open standards, even if you don't make the service open, still makes you more inclusive and helps a lot of people who would otherwise be shut out of your service.
jhasse 8y ago
so ... XMPP?

eigenvector 8y ago

RCS is an improvement to SMS but it does not address the core limitations: it is owned and controlled by carriers, so your ability to contact someone is entirely dependent on that user's carrier. It is tied to a single, physical device. WhatsApp shot to popularity because it was the opposite of SMS: an entirely over-the-top service that everyone could use, on any platform, without the consent, extra billing or buggy implementation of their carrier. As an app, it could be installed on the widest imaginable array of devices - including the obsolete, crappy ones that most of the people on Earth use - without OS updates. I don't need stickers or Google Assistant. Those things are nice, but they're not what I need. What I need is the ability to contact anyone, anywhere without having to wonder whether it's going to work when I hit 'send'. Hi Bob, did you get my photo? Sorry, it didn't go through, Bob's carrier in Bangladesh has set limits on photo size and mine was too big. I tried to send Raj a message, but he recently got an iPhone and my RCS message sent as SMS and his carrier blocks international SMS messages. WhatsApp & FB Messenger (and to a lesser extent iMessage) are successful because they reduce the thousands of carriers and hundreds of countries in the world to a single, seamless service. RCS is taking us back to the days where a single obstructionist carrier (remember lots of carriers are owned or controlled by governments) can screw things up for all of their users. WhatsApp et al showcased the ability of the Internet to make the world a smaller place. I don't Google understands how big or complex the world really is.

eloisant 8y ago
Frankly, I'd rather have a messaging system controlled by carriers but distributed among all of them (like SMS and RCS) than a messaging system fully controlled by a single company like Whatsapp, Telegram, Allo, iMessages and so on. I can still switch carriers and be able to communicate with my friends. The only issue I have with SMS is that it costs money when I'm not in my home country.
- eigenvector 8y ago
  Re. being able to switch carriers and still communicate, what happens when you travel and (temporarily) get a local SIM? Are you suddenly messaging all your existing contacts from an unrecognized foreign number "Hi, it's John, this is my temporary Thai number..." and then relying on that message not getting binned by some spam algorithm? What prevents carriers from charging extra for RCS messages originating abroad?

galadran 8y ago

No end to end encryption = no interest. If I use this to communicate with a business (or person!), the carrier can read every word. No thanks. Hell. You can't even download the standards documents without giving GSMA a name and address and consenting to receive promotional material...

lifthrasiir 8y ago
Oh. Thank you for pointing that out. I thought that Allo supports E2E so will chat, but that was my sloppy reading of The Verge article [1]: > But, like SMS, Chat won’t be end-to-end encrypted, and it will follow the same legal intercept standards. In other words: it won’t be as secure as iMessage or Signal. Dammit. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-m...

baybal2 8y ago

Was it their 12th attempt? I think they have to think about finally changing their product manager.

stevedonovan 8y ago
Perhaps the problem is that they are _constantly_ changing their product managers.

salimmadjd 8y ago

If I was to summarize the problem of Google is this: Google does not hire entrepreneurs. They're great at hiring engineers. They're great at hiring MBAs from top business schools. But their hiring process does not leave room for unusual rouge entrepreneurial people. I mentioned this to a person whose company was bought by FB and later became an investor. He agreed and he said, he was interviewed by google but they didn't hire him. So he started his company and a few years later sold it to FB. I know this in anecdotal. But I think Google just lacks the entrepreneurial blood. Someone to hustle a product with a cohesive strategy and vision and finding the way to build it up and turn it into a massive success.

mywittyname 8y ago
I think the issue is they want too hard to be seen as entrepreneurs. They are always reinventing the same products rather than just improving what they have. I'd go so far as to say, Google would benefit from a two-year ban on any new product releases. Engineers should spend that time focused on adding value to their current products.

cryptos 8y ago

I hope that this approach fails dramatically! Building such an infrastructure without end-to-end encryption is a crime.

Rjevski 8y ago

RCS is shit. It’s a good idea in theory, but in practice it’s a crappy, over-engineered clone of iMessage or WhatsApp without any of the good parts like end to end encryption or spam protections. It relies on the carriers to keep it functional and we all know this won’t end well... given the robocall and SMS spam situation do you really think RCS will be any different? But at least robocalls and SMS spam cant carry anything besides plain text, while RCS could contain HTML and a lot more “active” stuff which no doubt will exploit some bugs in the phone’s implementation to install malware.

mtve 8y ago
This is absolutely true. And as has been said in other threads, Google Talk was the only sane strategy for Google and it was lost.

blueside 8y ago

Sometimes it's hard to believe that Google's course of action and decision making to messaging isn't satire. I can't imagine what a dumpster fire must be going on somewhere within, eventually I hope we get to hear the stories behind their calamity of multifarious messaging products. I'm not even being facetious when I say that they should include an estimated date of when they expect to cease supporting said product (2 years seems to be about right)

fauigerzigerk 8y ago

Every time there is a choice to make for Google on messaging they predictably make the wrong one. How on earth can you control the most widely used OS on the planet and not be able to capture some market share without handing more power to operators?

rrdharan 8y ago
The (not-so-)secret is, they don’t control it.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  What exactly does Google not control that prevents them from pushing one high quality messaging app that is independent of network operators? What control do network operators have over Android? Device and SOC makers do indeed have some control over Android. But that is unrelated to Google's messaging mess.

arpit 8y ago

Will this now now third party services will be able to send rich messages to a phone number? This could be a good or a bad thing. I occasionally get random messages from my carrier or ad spammers, not looking forward to them including images or media in those. On the flip side, if you are a startup, you would be able to send rich messages to your clients without having to integrate Facebook messenger, Whatsapp etc etc

hiven 8y ago

Not only do they keep cancelling chat projects but this one isn’t even end to end encrypted. What’s the point. Either release a superior product or just let it go.

exabrial 8y ago

The carriers are idiots. It's where innovation goes to die. We had to pull them kicking and screaming into the smart phone and data era. (Remember When AT&T sent a paper copy of every image you downloaded on your iPhone in a bill?) Quite frankly the core problem with Google's strategy is involving then at all. Instead, go the manufacturers and campaign against supporting sms at all. It's insecure, slow, unreliable, monitored, among many other things. Push the manufacturers to an open Android messaging api that runs over TLS (or double ratchet) and bypasses the carriers completely, but the manufacturers can still rebrand. The other issue is Apple. For as much as they claim "privacy is a human right", they have been jerks about making sure iMessage drags it's feet using secure technologies to communicate outside of their ecosystem. Apple wants to ride a white horse on encryption, but in reality they're having an opposite, negative, effect on the vast majority of the world's population.

jimktrains2 8y ago
> Quite frankly the core problem with Google's strategy is involving then at all. Instead, go the manufacturers and campaign against supporting sms at all. It's insecure, slow, unreliable, monitored, among many other things. Push the manufacturers to an open Android messaging api that runs over TLS (or double ratchet) and bypasses the carriers completely, but the manufacturers can still rebrand. But it's universal. I would never buy a phone that doesn't support sms. How do I contact people with flip phones? People with iPhones? Also, Gchat is "monitored" as much as sms. Imessage claims it's not, but has that/can that be verified?
- sethhochberg 8y ago
  Its both universal _and_ relies on the voice network rather than the data network (if the device even has one). SMS is a fundamental part of the GSM spec, has been for over 30 years, and is one of those super lightweight battle-tested technologies that there are certainly some pretty great IP-based alternatives to, but which replacing wholesale for some yet-another-IP-based-rebranded-messanger seems crazy. The beauty of SMS riding on the voice network is that it gives you redundancy. Phone doesn't have a data signal, but can get voice? SMS still works. Until we live in a world where GSM and friends are dead and everything everywhere is VoLTE, SMS still has a place as a fallback. I'm always a little surprised to come into HN comment threads about SMS and see so many people rallying for its replacement, yet we go into a thread about Slack and see many of the same arguments being made to defend IRC, etc.

elvirs 8y ago

Its shocking how Google is embarrassing itself with these incompatible chat apps released one after another and abandoned right after the release. GTalk Gmail Chat Google Voice Hangouts Android Messages Allo Duo for fucks sake Google, just copy Whatsapp but make it stored on cloud, not on the device, like FB Messenger. Enable account recovery using email in addition to sms and enable usernames or email in addition phone number to add contacts. Thats pretty much all you need to do to beat the competition thanks to your android influence

sorenjan 8y ago
They recently added a chat function to the Youtube mobile app too.
mynameisvlad 8y ago
Google Voice and Duo are not messaging apps. GTalk, Hangouts, and GMail Chat are the same thing at different iterations and were therefore fully compatible with one another. If you're going to criticize Google for this, at least be correct when doing it.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  Google Talk was federated and could chat with people who had accounts other Google, so it feels a bit unfair to lump that in. It's like saying "Gmail is compatible with hypothetical Gmail where you can only send emails to other Gmail users, it's just a different iteration." Maybe true, but suddenly a very different service.
- sykh 8y ago
  You make a good point but also make a broader, negative point against Google. OP's incorrectness is evidence that Google is obfuscating the purpose of their products. There’s a bewildering amount of names and products. At some point fatigue sets in for casual users/observers and everything starts to get lumped in together. I’m not going to sort it out and so in my mind these are all messaging apps. Apparently Google is trying to do something in the communication space involving voice and text. It doesnt seem to be working and it’s ended up confusing a lot of people.

tosh 8y ago

Great example of how expensive it becomes over time to name (almost) every product you create "Brand" + x. Google is eroding trust in its product offering & regularly adding an adoption handicap to their whole product portfolio. P&G, Unilever et al know this. I'd expect the software companies to learn from the challenges of the "supermarket"-era brands.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
The tradeoff: - Add "Google" before the name any product announcement, and it's sure to be front page news[1]. - Shutdown any product with "Google" before the name, and it's sure to be front page news. [1]You can especially see this effect when a random Googler publishes a random project, but it's under github.com/google/ because it was done at work. Even if it's not "a Google product", it'll shoot up to the top of HN.

calypso 8y ago

But I just convinced my wife to start using Allo...

moksha256 8y ago

Didn't Google have messaging figured out with Google Talk? Everyone was on Gmail all day (as many still are) and people actually used it. Then they let it wither, came out with Hangouts, and it's been a downhill train wreck from there. Google Talk had the potential of being one of the biggest messengers in the world...they own Gmail and Android (!!!!!). Are you kidding me? There's really no good reason for them NOT to be in a hugely dominant position here. But instead they screwed it up & left a gaping hole in the marketplace.

pilom 8y ago
One of the best features of using Google Fi as my cell provider is that I can still use Google Talk. Still works amazingly well and I can send text messages directly from Gmail or from my android phone. I love it.
- chatmasta 8y ago
  I can do this and I don’t have project fi. I’ve got a google voice number from a long time ago, and I can text from that number via Hangouts in gmail or on mobile.
  - sli 8y ago
    Yeah, same. Hell, as a kid, I'd use GVoice really often just to send texts when I had wifi but no cell signal, or had a device without cell service (like a tablet). Saved me a couple times when I was younger and, say, ran out of toilet paper.
- jcomis 8y ago
  pushbullet (plus a few other apps) also recreate this functionality. Buggy and it's $5/month but I really use the hell out of it.
- JshWright 8y ago
  I was a Fi user for about a year, but had major issues getting the phone to switch back to the cell network when I left my house. We live in a little valley with poor reception, so the phone seemed to "give up" on cell service, and then I'd have to reboot it after I left my house to get it to reconnect (wifi calling worked fine while I was home).

wnevets 8y ago

I miss google talk so much. Stupid fast and very clean UI.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

49bc 8y ago

> Unlike Apple, RCS is designed to work with carriers who can develop their own messaging apps that work with the protocol No no no please. We should be doing everything we can to relegate carriers to “dumb” data providers. They don’t have he skills or expertise to provide anything beyond this, which they’ve demonstrated time and again.

ibdf 8y ago

They don't get it. People don't want new apps, they want improved versions of the app they already have. It takes so much time to adopt and adapt to an app... nobody I know uses Allo. I have a google phone and I don't use it, because no one else uses. Allo has so many interesting features but I can't use them if no one else uses the damn app. I don't have an iphone nor want one, but they got it right when it comes to building upon their core software. Same can be said to Windows/Microsoft. Yes, they are not perfect, yes sometimes behind everyone else when it comes to "the latest and greatest", but they have USERS! They know their audience and slowly improve their apps to keep them happy enough to keep using it. I can't believe a company this big with so many resources doesn't have an attention spam greater than 6 months.

scottinseattle 8y ago
By that definition, they do get it. Because RCS is an improved version of the Messages inbox already in the phone. No need to take any time to adopt and adapt to any new program.

owaislone 8y ago

That's it. I'm giving up on Google chat products. I tried hard to use Allo and get my friends to use but enough. We need a new XMPP like protocol that prioritizes privacy, end-to-end encryption and supports all the fancy features like stickers and video calls to make it easier to adopt. Does anything like this exist?

selectodude 8y ago
iMessage
- owaislone 8y ago
  Is iMessage XMPP like open protocol?
  - SamWhited 8y ago
    iMessage is XMPP isn't it (although a somewhat outdated version of the protocol)? It was the last time I checked, but I don't have a device capable of running it so that was a while ago. If it's not anymore I'd be curious to know what they replaced it with.
    - owaislone 8y ago
      I did not know that. I thought it was a locked down messaging network on Apple devices could get on (plus some SMS). Does that mean another service speaking XMPP can exchange messages with an iMessage user? Edit: According to Wikipedia, it's based on APNs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage

skywhopper 8y ago

This is weird but I have to assume it’s a political sop to the carriers to get something from them. The PR is disingenuous of course, but I’m more disappointed in the reporter for failing to mention a big advantage of iMessage and a reason lots of people choose WhatsApp are because not only do they provide a better experience than SMS but they are (at least they attempt to be) secure. No federated messaging system that involves the carriers will be end-to-end secure or provide easy syncing across clients.

d3v4n5h 8y ago

Check out this video by The Verge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCh-qRYMAKk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCh-qRYMAKk

mindcrime 8y ago

So, after all this time, the best approach to interoperable messaging is still XMPP. Google, carriers, etc. should just drop ALL of this non-standardized crapola, bundle an (optimized, efficient, well-written) XMPP client with Android and call it a day.

apeace 8y ago

> WhatsApp benefitted from being a first mover — all the other early leaders in Western markets are nowhere to be seen today Has Signal ever released numbers on active users? My anecdata on this is that ALL of my friends use Signal--and not because I use it or because as their tech-savvy friend I told them they should use it. I just started seeing them show up in Signal over the last year. I get the feeling that Signal may have a massive user base nobody really knows about, because they don't publish these numbers. Anybody know?

Markoff 8y ago
any chance most of your friends are males interested in IT? though i was surprised or building manager and guy fixing my plumbing are on Signal, only two other people besides those i convinced and one three friends working in IT

thrillgore 8y ago

I'm disappointed but not surprised by this development.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

For me, nothing demonstrates how self defeating Google's internal structure is, than chat. They had a lot of adoption of their system in the early 2000's (and granted it became unmaintainable but that was an engineering issue not a technical issue) and they killed it. They had a great system they could have copied (iMessage) and they ignored it. They had a standards friendly system and they spurned it. The combination of killing gchat and reader really struck me as "Wow, it feels this company has no idea what they are doing strategically."

periferral 8y ago

The problem with Allo and Duo and other "chat" tools google provided never felt feature complete. If I'm on my mobile phone, I want one app to get messages regardless if it comes from the carrier or my peeps on google. Hangouts is the closest thing we have to this. Even hangouts doesnt fully integrate. I'm a Fi user and when use apps that send text to verify, the autoverify doesnt work with Hangouts as my default messaging app. It only seems to work with Android Messaging app. These kind of half baked reasons are why none of the google messaging apps really have taken off. I agree with the past comment that Google had the opp to just improve on Google Talk and build on it rather than create 6 different messaging apps.

lanius 8y ago

I'd love for this to get widely adopted if it can remove the pain points around sending images through SMS/MMS. I have no confidence that recipients ever actually receive the images I text them.

throwawaymacmac 8y ago

I'm trying to be blunt here, thus the throwaway account. This has nothing to do with Google's messenger strategy (they have none, or actually, they don't really care), it's all about employees seeking promotions by releasing a "influential" project with "impacts" to get promotions. Now all the promotions are done, what's the incentive to keep it? Here's an idea, how about automatic revocation of all promotions if your project is nixed within a year?

45h34jh53k4j 8y ago

Hell no, Its like google has absolutely NO CLUE. The carriers are EVIL. You do NOT want them to have visibility of your messaging data. I really cant believe we are even discussing this in 2018. EVERY SINGLE MESSAGING PROVIDER WITH ANY CLUE IS END TO END. Google 2018 -- hey lets get the carriers to implement a clear text messaging protocol, surely after 30 years of abuse they wont mess up this time. Pathetic.

mxuribe 8y ago

Let me start by stating that i'm biased in favor of the matrix protocol...I don't see why google doesn't simply adopt matrix as its protocol and build a messaging client on top of that? Here are the benefits as i see them: * The foundations of the basic matrix protocol are already built - so google can simply augment existing efforts and contribute to the project. And, they don't have to wrestle with carriers. (Any help for the matrix team seems to be good thing to me!) * While, yes, most users wouldn't want to pay for such a chat service, google could tie this new chat service into their free gmail offering. I'm disgusted by my next statement, but i guess they could subsidize this for free users by displaying small text ads - just like in gmail - within the context of whatever matrix-compatible chat client they build. * Plus, they can tie it into their Google Apps for business - or is it now called G suite? - and companies who DO pay for the greater G suite service will simply gain an additional enterprise messaging service which is similar conceptually to slack, and be available for enterprises as private server instances. Google could monetize this by adding a few cents to the monthly fees GSuite users already pay. * By virtue of leveraging a decentralized/federated protocol like matrix - the users of google's matrix instances - either from the free or paid GSuite services - can STILL chat with users from other matrix server instances....not so differently in concept to gmail users emailing with non-gmail users. The cool thing about gchat back in the day was its support of xmpp, which i imagined help gchat's network effect...matrix could do the same here and now. Maybe I'm missing something...but as smart as the people at google seem to be, I'm constantly dumbfounded by their chat/messaging strategies. Ah, well.

georgeecollins 8y ago

Calling this a strategy is a stretch.

niftich 8y ago

In my opinion, the strategy behind this particular change is actually a lot more clear than some of their past ones [1]. Allo didn't gain significant ground and failed to displace WhatsApp, so they can't fight Facebook on that front. Instead, they've conceded the phonenumber-as-indentity over-the-top-messenger market, and have pivoted to something more fundamental: the humble SMS app, and SMS itself. They're baking all their Google Assistant hooks into the default Android SMS app, which will make it harder to avoid -- something Google definitely wants. This way, they don't have to fight Facebook and WeChat and Viber and Telegram on their competencies, because they've sidestepped them with the power of defaults for some amount of users, which will be a problem for the competition later on. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483

satysin 8y ago

SMS works because it is universal. RCS is just another network operator based messaging service with some new features. Who the fuck wants that?! What I want is a chat system that does not rely on a mobile operator to "enable" it and that works like e-mail (in that I can pick any own service provider to store my messages, deliver them, etc.) and offers E2EE, etc. It is 2018, we shouldn't be dealing with phone numbers for messaging when everyone has a much easier to remember email address. Honestly iMessage would be god damn perfect if it were open and you could use your own provider (or run your own).

prepend 8y ago

My cynical take. Phones are tied to identies and using google chat means that real people are linked to all their google activity. That is a extremely valuable for Google. So IM tied to phones is great for them. GoogleTalk and chat that allows internet only is not very valuable to Google. Since it’s trivial to have a chat protocol work well with carriers and browsers and everything else, Occum’s Razor says Google did it for money. By allowing anonymous accounts like gtalk and jabber and such, it makes their ad pool worse. They could go freemium and just ignore those less valuable accounts that aren’t tied to a phone. But instead save the 1000 engineer hours or whatever to not have to support non-phone based chat.

jg24 8y ago

Will having a new standard kill companies like Twilio? How will it affect them?

jg24 8y ago
Twilio makes probably about half of their revenue from SMS

Havoc 8y ago

Don't think doing something different every month counts as a "strategy".

indigodaddy 8y ago

Are there any chat/messaging alternatives in the dat/ipfs/beakerbrowser space?

bullen 8y ago

SMTP is my bet, let’s dust off the old spam can! https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-messages-chat-rcs-anil-sabharwal-imessage-texting https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17252486/google-android-m...

Zigurd 8y ago

If it is RCS, it will be interoperable messaging, which is something the world needs. But I rely on Hangouts and the fact that I can have calls to my Google Voice number ring as a Hangouts voice call. I hope there is a reasonable migration path that does not force me to give up important capabilities.

toddh 8y ago

Not git? That's so off trend.