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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 with
by 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 agoOne 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 agoI 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 agoYeah, 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 agopushbullet (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 agoI 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).
- rjbwork 8y agoAlso on Fi - I use hangouts for everything. On desktop hangouts has my SMS and Fi phone number available for voice calls. On the run, hangouts is on my phone for SMS, and I can use my phone as normal for calling people. It's far and away the best experience I've had with a Google product outside of search/gmail. They really need to look at what the Fi folks are doing, because it is truly excellent.
- jayd16 8y agoIt's a pretty simple explanation. Google talk was XMPP which is just not a good mobile protocol.
- donbox 8y agoCould not they just replace the XMPP protocol with whatever better protocol, while keeping the GTalk alive.
- delecti 8y agoThey kinda did exactly that. GTalk became Hangouts which is no longer quite XMPP.
- vijaybritto 8y agoIt's kinda sad how they ruined a superb product and replaced with something some par!
- orbitur 8y agoWell, not only did they change the protocol, they ruined the UI too.
- seba_dos1 8y agoX in XMPP stands for eXtensible. They could simply augment XMPP to match their needs better - and guess what, it's exactly what happened in last years. Now XMPP is a good, modern, battery- and UX-friendly IM protocol, with some clients even E2E encrypted by default.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoI had Google Talk on my phone for ages, I'm not getting what you mean by this. I had no issues. It was fast, to the point, and worked.
- mmcnl 8y agoI don't think lack of technical expertise to fix whatever needs to be fixed is what caused Google's demise in the messaging domain.
- sorenjan 8y agoGoogle messaging must have some of the worst project managers in the industry. Not only did they let their lead disappear, when they decided to start competing with Facebook and WhatsApp they released Allo! A crappy MVP in a crowded market hugely dependent on the network effect. And now they've decided to involve the carriers, using a technology that's not made to be cross platform but instead be dependent on phones. I can see RCS being a good solution for companies to send out rich boarding passes and similarly, but nobody around here uses SMS or MMS for person to person contact. Chat shouldn't be locked to or even routed through phones, and using a telephone number as an ID is impractical.
- vijaybritto 8y agoUsing a telephone number is impractical? That's our identity in the third world. I think they are focused on the developing world in this.
- pas 8y agoBecause GSM is everywhere whereas IP connectivity is spotty?
- Teckla 8y agoWhat if the user is on a WiFi-only tablet, or laptop, or desktop PC? What if the user is at an Internet cafe? What if the phone user has no cellular signal but has WiFi access? Clearly it would be a mistake to limit this to just phone users.
- what_ever 8y agoI think you really need to check how people use Internet in India, Indonesia and other Asian/African countries. I doubt anyone uses laptop or desktop PC unless it's needed for work. And Internet cafe is a thing of the past. Having wifi but no cellular signal is such a rare usecase.
- Teckla 8y ago
- rm999 8y agoGoogle dominated non-SMS chat in the late 2000s/early 2010s. I don't think they realized how insanely valuable that was - they were basically sitting on the future of communication. All they had to do was sit back and let network effects build their monopoly (with some more tech build-out and straightforward marketing in international markets). Instead, they myopically saw Facebook as a threat and started one of the most user-hostile rampages I've been victim to. They hobbled existing products and over-complicated new products to force people onto a platform no one asked for. Facebook (and others) used this opportunity to grab communication away from Google. It's all an interesting business case study of missing the forest for the trees.
- pixelpp 8y agoInteresting! I never looked at it that way...
- bearcobra 8y agoGoogle dominated non-SMS chat in the late 2000s/early 2010s My social group was dominated by BBM & Skype until iMessage & Facebook Messenger took over. I've always assumed Google's efforts around messaging were because they had a niche product inside Gmail that they wanted to make more consumer friendly, hence the constant attempts to rebrand it.
- sunstone 8y agoSometimes doing nothing is the best strategy but it's hard to get promoted that way.
- wetpaws 8y agoTotally agree. This is something a lot of people miss. IT culture in general and Google especially puts too much pressure on engineers to re-invent the wheel to get better visibility and promotions.
- nevir 8y agoWhen the primary thing you're evaluated for is "impact", it's a wonder that Googlers bother to maintain any existing products at all. (Plenty do out of love for the product/customers/etc, but man it's soul crushing to not be recognized for it)
- privateSFacct 8y agoYep - what's weird is gtalk used to work pretty well even in business context. Then they went the crazy forced google+ route (I actually liked google+, but they just kept jamming it everywhere - even youtube seemed to want to force a linked google+ profile - it was unusable) and started blowing up how chat worked over and over. Where these things linked? Google talk / hangouts seems to have started going down with the whole crazy google+ mess. Over to slack we go (which works fine). I like imessage etc - little to no spam. I'll be curious how this carrier controlled approach will handle spammers.
- agumonkey 8y agoI wonder how often they get internal suggestions to kill google+ which get vetoed out of brand pride.
- 5GallonBucket 8y ago>downhill train wreck The downhill train wreck is not isolated to their messaging services. Google, as a whole, is a fragmented mess that has manifested with Android OS. Not only is Android OS crippled by Google's ADD-fueled incompetence, it's crippled by their inability to remove carrier-influence from their devices. Now, Google wants to double down on their boneheaded decision by doing the same with messaging. Google Messaging needs to be carrier independant, have SMS fallback, integrate with all Google services, and be bundled with Google Services on Android. I have lost /ALL/ faith in Google.
- whatyoucantsay 8y agoGoogle talk was brilliant and it was a sad day when they shuttered it.
- skynetv2 8y agoi'd take gtalk back right away - the best message solution there ever was.
- adrianmonk 8y ago> Everyone was on Gmail all day Not everyone is on Gmail. There a untold millions of users who aren't interested in creating a Gmail account. Those users will never be reached with any "just use your Gmail account" strategy.