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[edit: deleted. Appear to have been rate limited by HN so I can't reply? so withdrawing from the conversation]

by untog 7y ago

crazygringo 7y ago
So I'm going to disagree with you for three reasons here. 1) A product has to have simple UX to achieve primary use cases easily. Even if all features can be engineered, building a simple intuitive UI that works for Slack chat, 1-1 calls, and big meetings is probably impossible. 2) Engineering-wise they're also very different. The behind-the-scenes architecture for 1-1 or small groups, versus huge meetings, is also totally different. Similarly whether chat persists in long-lived "rooms", or only for the length of a video call, or only between two people. 3) Finally, people making corporate buying decisions want a product that fits easily into their conceptual understandings. Slack created a category. Google had to respond with a product branded specifically for that category, not a mega-product that also does the things in that category, because people don't "get" that for whatever psychological reason. You're right that Hangouts did all this previously. But that's also why Hangouts failed. It was a "jack of all trades, master of none."
- serverholic 7y ago
  1) Is it really? Slack already has chat, and 1-1 calls. I don't see a huge UX leap to expand 1-1 calls to big meetings. 2) So what? If you have the technology for big meetings then you don't need to engineer anything else for 1-1 meetings. That's just UI at that point. 3) This makes sense and is probably the main reason hangouts failed. However, I wonder if they could have multiple sub-products under the hangouts umbrella but still keep it a unified piece of software.
  - crazygringo 7y ago
    > If you have the technology for big meetings then you don't need to engineer anything else for 1-1 meetings. Unfortunately not. A framework for large video meetings is necessarily routed through a central server which can add tremendous latency, even between two people near each other. The architecture for 1-1 meetings tends to be peer-to-peer and focus on minimizing latency. There are a lot of architecture tradeoffs between the different models. Choosing an optimal architecture for each product turns out to be quite necessary.
tester3 7y ago
>Despite the fact that FB Messenger is explicitly designed for non-professional use and can do group chats people are still gravitating to Zoom. Facebook doesn't seem to be secure. I bet people don't want to have hours of recordings attached to their real name, so creating random account on something like Zoom seems like an great.

[edit: deleted. Appear to have been rate limited by HN so I can't reply? so withdrawing from the conversation]

by untog 7y ago

[edit: deleted. Appear to have been rate limited by HN so I can't reply? so withdrawing from the conversation]

So I'm going to disagree with you for three reasons here. 1) A product has to have simple UX to achieve primary use cases easily. Even if all features can be engineered, building a simple intuitive UI that works for Slack chat, 1-1 calls, and big meetings is probably impossible. 2) Engineering-wise they're also very different. The behind-the-scenes architecture for 1-1 or small groups, versus huge meetings, is also totally different. Similarly whether chat persists in long-lived "rooms", or only for the length of a video call, or only between two people. 3) Finally, people making corporate buying decisions want a product that fits easily into their conceptual understandings. Slack created a category. Google had to respond with a product branded specifically for that category, not a mega-product that also does the things in that category, because people don't "get" that for whatever psychological reason. You're right that Hangouts did all this previously. But that's also why Hangouts failed. It was a "jack of all trades, master of none."

serverholic 7y ago
1) Is it really? Slack already has chat, and 1-1 calls. I don't see a huge UX leap to expand 1-1 calls to big meetings. 2) So what? If you have the technology for big meetings then you don't need to engineer anything else for 1-1 meetings. That's just UI at that point. 3) This makes sense and is probably the main reason hangouts failed. However, I wonder if they could have multiple sub-products under the hangouts umbrella but still keep it a unified piece of software.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  > If you have the technology for big meetings then you don't need to engineer anything else for 1-1 meetings. Unfortunately not. A framework for large video meetings is necessarily routed through a central server which can add tremendous latency, even between two people near each other. The architecture for 1-1 meetings tends to be peer-to-peer and focus on minimizing latency. There are a lot of architecture tradeoffs between the different models. Choosing an optimal architecture for each product turns out to be quite necessary.

tester3 7y ago

>Despite the fact that FB Messenger is explicitly designed for non-professional use and can do group chats people are still gravitating to Zoom. Facebook doesn't seem to be secure. I bet people don't want to have hours of recordings attached to their real name, so creating random account on something like Zoom seems like an great.