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Google is terrible at this. They have no credible replacement for Hangouts, do they? I used and loved the old Google Talk. Then they shuttered it and pushed eve
by SwellJoe 8y ago
Google is terrible at this. They have no credible replacement for Hangouts, do they? I used and loved the old Google Talk. Then they shuttered it and pushed everyone to Hangouts, which is...the same? Not better, not worse, just a very similar experience, with maybe better voice/video support. So, now they're killing this one, too?
Is there a turf battle among teams over chat within Google? I can't think of any other reason for them to keep killing products that work and have millions of users with nearly identical products that have no users. So much wasted energy. How many times do they think people will switch platforms before switching to something else made by a company that won't kill the product every few years?
- bootlooped 8y agoMy impression from reading stories about Google culture is that there is a very strong emphasis on launching products.
- vikinghckr 8y agoThat's not necessarily a bad thing for consumers if the replacement product is just as good or better than the previous one.
- Mindless2112 8y agoPutting aside quality comparisons, consider that Skype is still "Skype". Even non-technical people know what Skype is, whereas no one knows for sure what Google's Skype competitor is going to be.
- snaky 8y ago> Skype is still "Skype" In name only. Even non-technical people know what huge pile of crap "Skype" is nowadays.
- varjag 8y agoNo, it's the same product with enormous care for user transition. Right now I sit in a Skype chatroom continuously running since 2007.
- ElCapitanMarkla 8y agoI have the opposite experience. I hated the new UI they came out with recently and apparently so did 90% of my contact list. I used to always have it running now I barely open it.
- varjag 8y agoThe UI has changed more times than I care to count. Skype itself changed ownership 3 times, the underlying communication tech went from P2P to supernodes to Azure integration. At some point I ran its Linux client that hasn't been updated for 5 years. The damn thing never stopped working and the chat is still there.
- imron 8y agoZoom is the new skype
- lozaning 8y agoI've never once "zoom'ed" a friend. Do you find yourself doing that frequently?
- imron 8y agoNo, but I don't use Skype for that either. And though I don't use it with friends (FaceTime mostly fills that role) I work remotely and do use Zoom several times a week for video meetings and screen sharing.
- purple_ducks 8y agoZoom is the new Webex
- walterbell 8y agoWire is made by people who made the old Skype. Open-source and E2E encryption.
- metildaa 8y agoDoesn't it require some weird browser extension rather than asking for camera/mic or screensharing permissions through the APIs offered in all modern browsers? Seemed like a kludge when my SO had to use it, like they took the idea of Jitsi and wrecked it.
- Izkata 8y agoI use their standalone program on Ubuntu at work; we're switching from hangouts/meet to zoom for a lot (though ad-hoc stuff will likely remain hangouts due to it only being one-click to start one up). It's pretty straightforward, I've almost never had issues.
- imron 8y agoI just use their desktop app. The call quality of video and screen sharing is significantly better than Skype and hangouts.
- jjkmk 8y agoFunny you bring up skype, Microsoft is actually phasing it out (skype for business) and replacing it with MS Teams. https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-teams-now-ready-replace-skype-business-microsoft-says https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-teams-now-ready-rep...
- the_mitsuhiko 8y agoSkype for Business is not Skype but a rebranded Lync.
- happymellon 8y agoNot surprised. Lync is terrible. Why does it keep archiving all the conversations? Sometimes I want to continue a conversation, but it really doesn't want you to.
- happymellon 8y ago> Skype is still "Skype" Except when it is Lync Lync is an abomination that only exists to dilute the brand
- yrro 8y agoNo you're thinking of Office Communicator!
- avip 8y agoReplacing X with an "as good" Y is necessarily bad for consumers. It makes no sense to replace something that works. And hangouts works!
- scoot_718 8y agoThats silly. Consumers have to learn about the thing, learn how to use it. And those seeking to transition now don't have the google replacement. I'm looking elsewhere.
- beatgammit 8y ago"If". Most of their product releases are one step forward and one step back. For example, the new Gmail is a little nicer looking, but it's a huge resource hog compared to the previous one without any striking features (though there autocomplete thing is nice). Google Meet just seems to have a few fewer features than Hangouts, and I'm not really sure what it adds. I honestly haven't seen a new product from them that is noticeably better than whatever it replaced for quite a while. Most things seem to be change for the sake of change.
- jfoutz 8y agoInbox was a tragedy. It’s very effective at separating stuff I care about from stupid junk. Unfortunately it greatly reduced the time I spent looking at email. Fantastic for me, awful for ad impressions. The new gmail is ok I guess. It’s not substantially different from Mac inbox for me to care. Either way I’ll spent some time scanning subject lines and senders. I might be an outlier though.
- flavor8 8y agoWhat new consumer software products have come out in the last year from google?
- stabbles 8y agoGoogle Duo would probably replace Hangouts
- basilgohar 8y agoGoogle Due cannot be a replacement for Hangouts without a serious overhaul: * Duo is linked via phones, not Google accounts * Duo is strictly peer-to-peer, not for groups * Duo is video/audio only, no chat/text So, it could be a Duo-like replacement for Hangouts, maybe. But not a complete replacement. A merger of Allo + Duo (does anyone here know what Allo is?) could check some of these boxes. But one of the primary appeals of Duo is E2E encryption, and that is not in Google's interests in the long run.
- bootlooped 8y agoThere could be value in Google having an E2E encrypted messaging service if for no other reason than taking users from their competitors and keeping them in the Google ecosystem.
- flavor8 8y agoThat was launched in 2016. My question to the OP was about their product-launching abilities. They seem rather slow on the consumer software front, i.e. they don't seem to be launching new products (or even updating existing) at the same rate that they're retiring them.
- sanat 8y agoLike the article says Google Hangouts Chat will replace Hangouts. Chat even has hangouts classic backwards compatibility.
- 8y ago
- zekevermillion 8y agoGoogle Talk was better. I used that for business purposes, but once they migrated everyone to hangouts the quality -- latency, sound, etc, dropped a lot, at least as experienced by me. I have to agree with you it must be internal politics. Otherwise why would they keep inflincting harm on themselves? But maybe they have some data that suggests this is a good idea...
- danellis 8y agoReally? I get excellent quality from Hangouts. HD video with enough clarity to make out individual hairs on a cat.
- pathseeker 8y agoYeah, I get lagging and voice/video sync issues. Trying having a conversation with a person instead of a cat to experience it. :)
- eigenvector 8y agoI find Hangouts handles low bandwidth and/or high latency a lot worse than FaceTime.
- int_19h 8y agoFor starters, Google Talk had an actual client app (and then of course you could just use any XMPP client). Hangouts is a Chrome web app, which in practice means that it doesn't really behave like a proper app at all - e.g. on Windows, if you pin it to the taskbar, then close the window, and click on the taskbar icon, it'll open Chrome extensions page, not the app itself.
- StavrosK 8y agoI still use the XMPP client, though, it never stopped working.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wetpaws 8y agoGoogle talk had a small and clean desktop client. Hangout pretty much forced me to use mobile or chrome. GTalk could communicate with any jabber network. Hangouts was all about Google's walled garden. I finally switched to telegram and I could not be more happy.
- killjoywashere 8y agoEasy. They basically rebranded Hangouts as Meet.
- notatoad 8y agoIsn't Meet is part of G-suite, and only useful for in-network communication with your G-suite organization?
- killjoywashere 8y agoyou can invite people from outside your org to meetings, but yes, it's not a purely public service. Duo and Allo are still out there though.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- X-Istence 8y agoOnly if you have a paid Gsuite account. Those of us grandfathered in to the Gsuite service with their free account don't get access to Meet.
- AceyMan 8y ago>>> grandfathered in to the Gsuite service [...] Ah, yes, ye olde "Google Apps for Domains" (boy, there's a catchy product name ...). I've got three of them still running: two I rarely use, but the other is the family account and it's got a lot of history in the mailbox. I'm gonna be effed if/when they pull the plug on us greybeards still rolling on that old free tier. /Acey p.s. The new Gmail theme sucks rocks. Anyone have a 411 how to make it look as near to the old style as possible. (tbh, I haven't hunted for an answer, but tacked this on in case anyone reading knows a good blog for that.)
- X-Istence 8y agoI've got four still running, although 2 are mostly shut down now, I just need to pull the Google Docs. The last two are going to be bigger issues as there is a ton of mail and no good way even for an admin to transfer that mail to a new server. One being a family account also is even more problematic, they expect Gmail quality web interface and I can't really give that to them.
- Iwan-Zotow 8y ago> They have no credible replacement for Hangouts, do they? Google Duo/Allo ?
- kyrra 8y agoHangouts Chat is the replacement for Hangouts as far as I can see. While it is business only at this point, if they do release a customer-facing version of it, the existing Hangouts could easily die.
- pathseeker 8y ago>Google is terrible at this. They have no credible replacement for Hangouts, do they? I used and loved the old Google Talk. Then they shuttered it and pushed everyone to Hangouts, which is...the same? Not better, not worse, just a very similar experience, with maybe better voice/video support. It's not even the same. It's worse. I used to be able to use XMPP.
- metildaa 8y agoDidn't Google just recently rewrite the infrastructure that supports Hangouts? IIRC that caused many Google Voice integrations to break, as they ripped out what was left of their siloed XMPP stack. Why invest all this labor, only to announce shutdown of Hangouts a few months later?
- 0x54D5 8y agoThe new Google Chat for G Suites is actually not even chat. Each chatroom is a collection of Google Wave style cards that jump over each other as activity happens in different ones. The experience is so bad I wrote a blog post about it here. https://technex.us/2018/11/google_chat_is_the_worst_desktop_chat_program_I_have_ever_used/ https://technex.us/2018/11/google_chat_is_the_worst_desktop_...
- brazzledazzle 8y agoWe used it as a backup one day when our normal chat service went down. I closed it within 5 minutes and I didn’t even hit your issues which are way worse. What a shit show.
- kageneko 8y agoUggh. Yeah. We've been required to use it at work, if we want real-time chat. We were using Slack before, but it was taken off the authorization list. I made a long list of things that was wrong with it while we were with it. The notifications are the worst so far. Constant notification spam for every single message. I disabled everything ... and it still sent them. I had to turn them off in iOS.
- adrianmonk 8y ago> pushed everyone to Hangouts, which is...the same? While Google is terrible at this, I believe there is one other major difference: IIRC, Talk did not have cloud sessions. You could not switch from desktop to mobile and continue a conversation right where you left off. (The closet you could get was look at archived messages in Gmail.) Hangouts, like virtually any modern chat system, does have this. So they did add at least one feature that's pretty useful for people even when not using voice and video.
- codazoda 8y agoFor business conference calling they have meet, which is pretty similar to Hangouts for that purpose and is what we use at my office for conference calls. I've never tried to make a call to a single person with Hangouts because Snap, FaceTime, and others are better. They also had another app that competes with Snap and FaceTime; I don't recall the name. So, seems like their shutting down something that's already been replaced by their own tech.
- tootie 8y agoI may get scorn for saying this but it's the byproduct of a developer-first culture. They build amazingly functional products with no clear product strategy or branding. They need much more customer-focussed and product-focussed. That's why Apple and Amazon beat them on everything except search.
- alasdair_ 8y ago>I may get scorn for saying this but it's the byproduct of a developer-first culture. Google is now a promotions-first culture. You get promoted for launching new stuff, not for doing the work to make someone else's vision better.
- PurpleRamen 8y agoA company of rockstars without audiance.
- toyg 8y agoThe bazillions of android users relying on Google services is a big audience, and fundamentally captive too. I reckon the problem is that very few services actually make money, everything else is so low-stakes in monetary terms that they can afford to be super-casual about it.
- imhoguy 8y agoIt may be some grander plan to slice an IT cartel cake by big-cos. G+ to FB, Hangouts > FB Messenger. Non aggresion pact in force for me.
- riffraff 8y agoThere was also Google duo, which was.. the same but different?
- yogenpro 8y ago> They have no credible replacement for Hangouts, do they? Hangouts chat is supposed to be the replacement: https://gsuite.google.com/products/chat/ https://gsuite.google.com/products/chat/ It might be made available to (non-gsuite) consumers at some point.
- null000 8y agoI think the replacement is supposed to be just straight texting now that they have the rich text protocol or whatever. Kinda stupid, but like - that's Google's chat strategy in a nutshell.