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And don't forget that all of that worked within Gmail. It floors me that Google didn't realize what they had when they had it. I used to manage all of my daily

And don't forget that all of that worked within Gmail. It floors me that Google didn't realize what they had when they had it. I used to manage all of my daily communications though one pinned tab that was always open. Heck, half the day, that tab would have its own dedicated computer monitor. Moving to a new service for email, messaging or SMS didn't even enter my mind because it would have been so inconvenient. But now, I'm happy to experiment, because it's all siloed anyway. As someone who has had Gmail since 2004 and a Google phone number since just after they bought Grand Central, there's a good chance I'll be using my own domain for email in a year.

user3939382 5y ago
I am with you. I had voicemail, SMS, "gchat" and email in one place. It was perfect. They pushed so hard for Orkut and especially Google+ when they had this magical combination that they never even marketed, you'd have to have stubmled on the configuration by accident. The entire time I was enjoying it I would explain it to the surprise of others. It was also really nice when there was an iOS app named Talkatone that combined Google Voice calls, SMS, and voicemail into one. Circa 2012 that stopped working and Google rolled out separate Hangouts and Google Voice apps and nothing has been as good since. In the meantime I became sickened by Google's ethics and behavior and have migrated all of those services to a combination of Fastmail and Anveo.
tacostakohashi 5y ago
Yes, inside gmail if you wanted that. Alternatively, inside hangouts in a browser. The Hangouts app on Android was also a possibility. All synced, all showing the same chats/SMS side-by-side. I had some very minor flakiness with receiving certain SMSs with Fi/Hangouts, and various anecdotes on the internet suggested not using it for SMSs as a solution. For me, that didn't make a difference, but it's like they've given up on whatever complexities there are around unifying, and going back to two lowest-common-denominator siloed applications. Another part of it is probably that Hangouts / google chat is a channel (network) that they completely own, whereas SMS is a generic, third party protocol, and history tells us that XMPP, MSN/Yahoo Messenger integration, Facebook RSS feeds etc can't last because each company wants to be the sole owner of a walled garden, and not a slice of a larger pie.
ajennings 5y ago
Agree. Also, you could do the following things which Voice doesn't support: - Have multiple chats open (and be working on several responses) at the same time - Star chats (nice workflow for remembering to respond later) Although there were a couple things which, annoyingly, never worked right: - Receiving contacts (vcards) from iOS. - Starting a new group text (more than one recipient) from within Gmail. You could respond to an existing group text but to start a new one, I had to do it from the hangouts app on my phone.

user3939382 5y ago

I am with you. I had voicemail, SMS, "gchat" and email in one place. It was perfect. They pushed so hard for Orkut and especially Google+ when they had this magical combination that they never even marketed, you'd have to have stubmled on the configuration by accident. The entire time I was enjoying it I would explain it to the surprise of others. It was also really nice when there was an iOS app named Talkatone that combined Google Voice calls, SMS, and voicemail into one. Circa 2012 that stopped working and Google rolled out separate Hangouts and Google Voice apps and nothing has been as good since. In the meantime I became sickened by Google's ethics and behavior and have migrated all of those services to a combination of Fastmail and Anveo.

tacostakohashi 5y ago

Yes, inside gmail if you wanted that. Alternatively, inside hangouts in a browser. The Hangouts app on Android was also a possibility. All synced, all showing the same chats/SMS side-by-side. I had some very minor flakiness with receiving certain SMSs with Fi/Hangouts, and various anecdotes on the internet suggested not using it for SMSs as a solution. For me, that didn't make a difference, but it's like they've given up on whatever complexities there are around unifying, and going back to two lowest-common-denominator siloed applications. Another part of it is probably that Hangouts / google chat is a channel (network) that they completely own, whereas SMS is a generic, third party protocol, and history tells us that XMPP, MSN/Yahoo Messenger integration, Facebook RSS feeds etc can't last because each company wants to be the sole owner of a walled garden, and not a slice of a larger pie.

ajennings 5y ago

Agree. Also, you could do the following things which Voice doesn't support: - Have multiple chats open (and be working on several responses) at the same time - Star chats (nice workflow for remembering to respond later) Although there were a couple things which, annoyingly, never worked right: - Receiving contacts (vcards) from iOS. - Starting a new group text (more than one recipient) from within Gmail. You could respond to an existing group text but to start a new one, I had to do it from the hangouts app on my phone.