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Hangouts is an example of a failure: Google had a huge hit with Talk/Hangouts and for a while it was THE leading chat app. ...And then they mostly abandoned it,

Hangouts is an example of a failure: Google had a huge hit with Talk/Hangouts and for a while it was THE leading chat app. ...And then they mostly abandoned it, told everyone to use one of a half dozen different replacements which all failed as people moved onto other things. Had they continued to modernize and prioritize Hangouts, all of the newer chat startups would never have even existed. It "won" the early chat app fight and basically heralded the death of AIM, YIM, and MSN messenger, only to be murdered in-house by Google's own product teams. Google Photos I think is reasonably successful, but mostly as "where your Android's photos end up". I am not sure how many people have a strong relationship with Google Photos. And I still hear about people upset about Google killing Picasa in favor of it. It is worth nothing that Picasa, the foundation of Photos, was not something Google developed, but something Google acquired from outside.

maps7 7y ago
For my social group.. what killed MSN was a combination of Facebook and moving to mobile.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Picasa was damn good software. I still miss it.
- thombat 7y ago
  It gets ever-more rickety but it's still usable, and I still use it: the combination of decent face recognition, useful tools, fast UI, locally-stored photos is a combination that I value and I've yet to find an acceptable substitute on Windows or Linux.
  - brnt 7y ago
    Have you considered Digikam? It does a lot more, but you don't have to use that.
  - mceachen 7y ago
    If it gets too rickety for you, you should try PhotoStructure. It's locally hosted, can be run on docker/headless or on a desktop, the libraries are read/writeable across platforms, and it has the most robust asset merging and tag inference that I'm aware of. My beta users are using it for free in exchange for their feedback. I'm hoping to release the final beta within a week. After beta there will be free and paid tiers. Read more: https://photostructure.com/about/introducing-photostructure/ https://photostructure.com/about/introducing-photostructure/ Changelog: https://photostructure.com/about/release-notes/ https://photostructure.com/about/release-notes/
bad_user 7y ago
I disagree, Google Hangouts was a failure from the start. Former Google Talk supported XMMP, including federation, which meant you could connect with multiple clients and talk with people talk with people that don't have Google accounts. With Hangouts politics took over. They eventually told people the line about XMMP not evolving fast enough for their needs. But I remember their leadership complaining about their competition not playing nice. So when Hangouts happened I saw absolutely no reason to use it. There were plenty of alternatives on the market already, at work we were all using Skype. And at that time I was working with former Googlers that preferred Google's shit. You might give me the line about the general population not caring, bla, bla, but Google is in the habit of betraying their power users and early adopters. They did it with Google Reader. They did it with Inbox. And I was actually glad to see Hangouts fail. It might have been a good implementation of yet another chat app, but few people cared.

maps7 7y ago

For my social group.. what killed MSN was a combination of Facebook and moving to mobile.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

Picasa was damn good software. I still miss it.

thombat 7y ago
It gets ever-more rickety but it's still usable, and I still use it: the combination of decent face recognition, useful tools, fast UI, locally-stored photos is a combination that I value and I've yet to find an acceptable substitute on Windows or Linux.
- brnt 7y ago
  Have you considered Digikam? It does a lot more, but you don't have to use that.
- mceachen 7y ago
  If it gets too rickety for you, you should try PhotoStructure. It's locally hosted, can be run on docker/headless or on a desktop, the libraries are read/writeable across platforms, and it has the most robust asset merging and tag inference that I'm aware of. My beta users are using it for free in exchange for their feedback. I'm hoping to release the final beta within a week. After beta there will be free and paid tiers. Read more: https://photostructure.com/about/introducing-photostructure/ https://photostructure.com/about/introducing-photostructure/ Changelog: https://photostructure.com/about/release-notes/ https://photostructure.com/about/release-notes/

bad_user 7y ago

I disagree, Google Hangouts was a failure from the start. Former Google Talk supported XMMP, including federation, which meant you could connect with multiple clients and talk with people talk with people that don't have Google accounts. With Hangouts politics took over. They eventually told people the line about XMMP not evolving fast enough for their needs. But I remember their leadership complaining about their competition not playing nice. So when Hangouts happened I saw absolutely no reason to use it. There were plenty of alternatives on the market already, at work we were all using Skype. And at that time I was working with former Googlers that preferred Google's shit. You might give me the line about the general population not caring, bla, bla, but Google is in the habit of betraying their power users and early adopters. They did it with Google Reader. They did it with Inbox. And I was actually glad to see Hangouts fail. It might have been a good implementation of yet another chat app, but few people cared.