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Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline
- jaimex2 5y agoGoogle as an inovative company with amazing things to try died almost a decade ago. Today its more or less IBM. Would you try IBMs new chat app?
- gerikson 5y agoI'd trust it to stick around more than a few years, that's for sure.
- sethherr 5y agoLooool. Zing. I’d absolutely trust pretty much any company more than google on that front.
- jjcon 5y agoI would say google is closer to the new Oracle than new ibm
- deadmutex 5y agoThere's so many counter examples to this though... E.g. Stadia, which a lot of people doubted would be technically possible at all.
- Nicksil 5y ago>There's so many counter examples to this though... You work for Google; there may be some bias here. >E.g. Stadia, which a lot of people doubted would be technically possible at all. Technically impossible? Really? I don't think anyone held doubt. Perhaps people figured it'd be expensive to develop but certainly not impossible.
- deadmutex 5y ago> Technically impossible? Really? I don't think anyone held doubt Yes, so many people were citing latency would make it unplayable, etc. > You work for Google; there may be some bias here. If I was stating an opinion, maybe. In this case, I am merely pointing out the counter example: Stadia, etc.
- kd913 5y agoThe concept of stream gaming was done before? I don't think anyone argued that Google couldn't technically develop a solution as good as the predecessors who have far less resources. I don't think Google has solved the fundamental issue which is latency and home broadband infrastructure. They can handwave it with AI, ML latency algorithms and video compression algorithms, but the latency is still not competitive to conventional gaming.
- jaimex2 5y agoTurns out they're being outdone by nVidia's GeForce now anyway.
- HatchedLake721 5y agoI’ve played OnLive a decade ago, same concept unless I’m missing something?
- jaimex2 5y agoIs it innovative? I've heard of it but isn't it just an iteration on the usual remote play tech? ie Wii U, Steam Link/Remote, nVidia Play/Geforce Now etc I can't say I've ever heard it talked about in my gaming circles.
- flomo 5y agoI worked at a place which had Lotus Sametime.
- Scaevolus 5y agoThey forgot about Inbox! After following this nonsense product timeline for 16 years from the original Google Talk days, my last chat thread still using Hangouts moved to Facebook Messenger. chat.google.com is just aggressively worse in far too many ways, and will surely be killed circa 2024.
- 0x0EB0DA10 5y agoIsn't Inbox just an email client? > chat.google.com is just aggressively worse in far too many ways, and will surely be killed circa 2024. I doubt it. Google Chat is Google's enterprise product offering like Microsoft's skype.
- sahkopoyta 5y ago>Google Chat is Google's enterprise product offering like Microsoft's skype. Yeah, at our company we have actually used Google Chat somewhat succesfully as main tool for internal communication
- mrweasel 5y agoWe do to, the main feature is you’re able to start a quick meeting on Google Meet. Google Chat gets the job done, no one really enjoy using it, but it mostly just works. They could improve Chat a lot if they just cared to do native clients. Seriously, how many developers would that require? Like three for macOS, and the same for Windows and Linux?
- dudus 5y agoThis comment is funny because Skype was killed in favour of Teams.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoAnd Skype for Business was a rebranded/maybe-modified Lync... not sure whether that counts for more or less continuity.
- Osiris 5y agoDoes anyone have any insight into Google's internal politics or processes that lead to this mess, and why is chat so much more fragmented at Google than other services?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sb057 5y agoFrom what I understand, promotions at Google are largely granted at the completion of leading some kind of initiative; for example, launching a new product. The problem being that once the project lead has been promoted, they are no longer in charge of that project, and no one really takes over for it, leading to neglect and eventually being shut down entirely.
- xyzzyz 5y ago> The problem being that once the project lead has been promoted, they are no longer in charge of that project That’s not how it works, promotion does not move you to a different position. Project leads in charge stay in charge after promotion. What often happens though is that promoted people leverage their new, higher level to move to or start more desirable projects.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y agoSo neglect with extra steps.
- justicezyx 5y agoIt's not messy in Google standard. Politics are normal, for an unsuccessful in Google's standard. It's just not meaningful for Google. It's like Jeff Bezos is so rich that he picked a very awkward candidate to replace his wife, but having a female companion to Jeff is no longer crucial for his success (imagine what would happen if Jeff married his current girl friend...).
- barsonme 5y ago
- COGlory 5y agoI tried so hard to integrate into the Google ecosystem. I had a Gmail account and Google Talk to start. Eventually an Android phone, on Project Fi, with Hangouts and SMS (so I could send SMS over the internet). I upgraded from Gmail to Inbox. Then when they ditched that for Allo and Duo I tried to switch to those. Then I lost SMS on my computer because it got removed from Hangouts. Then I tried to switch to Google voice after they redid that, but you couldn't have Google voice with Fi...I also uploaded all my music to Google music. All my RSS in Google reader. I had a Google+ account. Multiple Google pixels. I really thought Google was going to be the answer for a completely integrated, non-Apple online life. Anyways, long story short, after endless frustration trying to get everything to work seamlessly, I ditched Google entirely. My email is now IMAP. I have multiple accounts in one app. My calendar and contacts are now WebDAV. Every other app I use on PC and mobile can integrate with them. My messaging is now Element/Matrix with bridges to whatever other services I need. My search is DuckDuckGo, browser is Firefox, etc. Currently, everything is as integrated, or more integrated, than it was with Google, and worlds more stable. Somehow, despite being huge and having all the data and basically a monopoly, they still can't integrate to save their lives.
- fastball 5y agoWhich service do you use for CalDAV / CardDAV? I've been trying to migrate from a gmail account to my own personal domain, but my current provider doesn't support those so I want to move on to someone else. The thing that annoys me most is that (as far as I can tell) only the big name providers have integrated mail/caldav/carddav, if you use a bring-your-own-domain solution they need to be added as 3 separate accounts (at least on iOS/macOS).
- arvindamirtaa 5y ago+1 I've been looking for a sane calendar service that's not Google calendar and there's just nothing that's open-standards compatible.
- danieldk 5y agoFastmail supports CalDAV (as does iCloud).
- anonygler 5y agoThey left out google groups. I’m sorry, groups team, the local baseball teams and HOAs see you.
- edoceo 5y agoNope. Groups.io works a treat
- sb057 5y agoThe author seems to have forgotten about YouTube Messages: https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/12446824/heads-up-we%E2%80%99re-removing-the-ability-to-message-directly-on-youtube-after-september-18 https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/12446824/heads-up-...
- busymom0 5y agoI didn't even know this ever existed.
- donny2018 5y agoWait till you find out that the new Google Pay app also doubles as a chat app.
- maratc 5y agoZawinski's Law of App Envelopment: Every app attempts to expand until it can do chat. Those apps which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoGoogle photos as well! Just discovered this feature last week. https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/03/google-photos-adds-a-chat-feature-to-its-app/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/03/google-photos-adds-a-chat-...
- wffurr 5y agoFTA: “plus innumerable chat features built into other Google products we won’t mention here”
- Gustomaximus 5y agoI feel they missed out massively in not centralising the communications standards. Not sure if this was realistic or the new products were trying to create whole new tech that stopped this but when they saw different directions some core standards for interoperability would have helped. So if you had Hangouts and I had Allo we could still chat as least in the most standard was of voice/video/message. Proliferation would have mattered less and the product teams could have focused on UX/ new features/brand separately to their hearts content. It would also help people try platforms cause I I could swap to the latest and greatest but still chat to my contacts Id be more willing to try vs trying to drag people across to a new platform.
- gerash 5y agoPhone lines have this solved. You don't need to be on ATT to call someone on ATT. I don't get what's the deal with the messaging platforms. I hope some regulation forces interoperability.
- danuker 5y agoMeanwhile you can move to Matrix; it breaks into quite some walled gardens: https://matrix.org/bridges/ https://matrix.org/bridges/
- ta1234567890 5y agoSo interesting, it’s like the old times again. That website gave me a flashback to Trillian in the ICQ/AOL/Messenger days. Wow, just checked and they are still around.
- Al-Khwarizmi 5y agoInteresting, but it seems that in order to make it work, I have to know about various different types of "bridges", "plumbing", and whatnot. So, really, quite different from the simplicity of calling someone on a different phone network. Or at least the descriptions on the website make it seem that way. As someone rather busy that cannot spend a few hours configuring I'm not even going to download it...
- sirius87 5y agoGmail now displays a splash/loading screen that reads "Google Workspace". Confused the heck out of me because I have a personal account with Google One for extra storage space, and a Google Workspace account for a managed domain for my startup.
- superzamp 5y agoSimilarly disturbing, anything related to login seems to briefly hop-redirect through accounts.youtube.com at some point in the auth flow.
- dmitriid 5y agoBecause accounts in Google ecosystem is such a mess, no one understands how they work. This isn't helped by all the systems they acquired and bolted on, and by various teams coming up with their own login flows. Just an example of the mess: https://grumpy.website/post/0PU1U2r3v https://grumpy.website/post/0PU1U2r3v
- nuker 5y ago> SMS/RCS services: Google Voice, Android Messages app with RCS chat integration Does it mean they are now plugged in SS7 network? Thats a throve of new user data.
- gman83 5y agoIt hasn't been all that confusing to me. I was on Google Talk, then I switched to Hangouts, which I have been using with my family until about a month ago, we've since transitioned to the new Google Chat and it's been fine. I like that it works on every device just by logging in. I also use Signal if there's more confidential stuff I need to send. I haven't used SMS in years and I really hope they don't try to bake that back in. Nobody I know in Europe uses SMS, it's just for receiving codes and stuff.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago> Nobody I know in Europe uses SMS, it's just for receiving codes and stuff. I still use SMS in the UK if I'm in an area with poor data connection. SMS will work over 2G even.
- sundvor 5y ago> receiving codes I wish that would stop. SMS is horribly insecure as a 2nd factor.
- perryizgr8 5y agoWhat else would you suggest as replacement? Sms is ubiquitous and cheap.
- sundvor 5y agoTime based one time password authenticators, or one time password lists? Mobile phone plans can be highjacked just far too easily, and is a highly vulnerable vector for getting "keys to the kingdom" (ie your private Gmail account) for complete identity and asset theft.
- toastal 5y agoLiving abroad, I'm still very reliant on Google Voice for the 4-5 annual calls I need to make with say my bank or credit card because they will only do certain transactions by voice. Or other services demand a US telephone number without allowing a country code because of myopic design. We really need to disconnect the need for phones for services that can be digital. People don't have landlines and there's a lot of people that would probably prefer a data-only plan since they don't make phone calls. Regular phone calls aren't normally encrypted either. At least with Google Voice I've been able to circumvent having a 'real' US number -- giving the data brokers more data points. That is until I get locked out of services like PayPal who blocked Google Voice so I have no way to authenticate (not that they have a reason to need my phone number to bridge my already-verified bank with another service).
- zmmmmm 5y agoAmazingly Hangouts is still the most cross platform, generally usable and useful chat app I have ... it even still accepts XMPP connections. And of course, they are trying to kill it. (at least that is what the message I got last night said) ... sigh.
- rektide 5y agoHad no idea Hangouts still had XMPP connectivity, wow! I really feel like the article is massively missing out for not mentioning that Talk/Hangouts had interoperability, that you could Bring Your Own Software.
- zmmmmm 5y agoYes, I feel like its something Google receives insufficient credit for. Amongst all the the massive propriety / walled garden orgy going on with messaging systems it is a real stand out differentiating feature and something they have maintained for nearly 2 decades now without interruption. Google does plenty wrong, but I have to say it's noticeable that when tech companies actually do something right they often get zero to negative credit for it, so from that perspective it is hard to blame them sometimes.
- nevster 5y agoThere are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, (and off-by-one errors....) I feel like naming things is something Apple works really hard on. And why they place so much emphasis on it in their keynotes, when they use the phrase "And we're calling it ..."
- oblio 5y ago"And we're calling it..." iPhone Xs Max Apple has improved their naming but they had a bunch of duds.
- robertoandred 5y agoIt’s not like that was far removed from iPhone 6S Plus.
- rawoke083600 5y agoApple-Tv apple-tv+ apple-tv-the-box...
- sundvor 5y agoI've used Google Talk ie Hangouts since the beginning with my friends/family. It's been a service that's worked reasonably well, for ages - and we can't have that, can we? So now, on Android, they're trying to force us over to "Chat in Gmail". No, just no. I don't want to open my email to then hit a chat tab to message my brother. They must be separate apps; it's messy when they try to cram everything into one app, there's even Meet there now. (So there's a separate Google Chat app as well, but that's not mentioned at all in the Hangouts messaging, so I can only assume it's another dead project#. Functionality was awful and clunky when I tried it at some stage before). Whoever's come up with this has absolutely no idea how their products are being used in the real world. Looking for an alternative now that's not eg Facebook. Not sure about Discord, due to security. Not too keen on Signal due to ease of use, but might end up on that. ---- Edit: Signal is looking much nicer on the mobile than I recalled, sharing multiple pictures is really easy! This might be the go to. #Also checked again on "Google Chat", still buggy (tried sharing multiple pics, weird behaviour) - but at least it's got a dark background now, so appears to be in dev - even though they'd like us to Chat in Gmail..
- pineapple128 5y agoSignal is just as easy to use as WhatsApp for example. You register with your phone number and you can call/text anyone on your contacts who has installed Signal. It even has video calls and recently added screensharing to them.
- sundvor 5y agoThanks, that might be a great candidate then - appreciated.
- echelon 5y agoThe problem with Google is Sundar Pichai. His peers -- Satya Nadella, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and Mark Zuckerberg -- all deeply understand and concern themselves with their companies' respective places in the world. They think twenty years into the future and frequently take risks to mitigate a changing landscape and position themselves for future wins. Sundar Pichai isn't one to make bold bets. His company is a fat pig suckling on ad money. Google itself is completely drunk, comatose. Google needs bold leadership. If nothing changes, it will eventually fall into decline and become a footnote. Not only can this happen, it's already happened many times before.
- throwaway29303 5y agoI agree, however, these problems started showing up soon after their previous CFO, Patrick Pichette, left Google and Ruth Porat took the reigns. Since then I've noticed they've been obsessively bean counting. Sundar, IMHO, was part of their strategy to get into the Next Billion Users.
- mkr-hn 5y agoI don't think Google has yet realized Microsoft is going after their backend and B2B/enterprise customers (365[Azure, Teams, Office]), while Apple is going after all their frontend customers[2]. Google still acts like it's 2004 when Microsoft and Apple still acted like it was 1984. [2] https://stratechery.com/2019/the-iphone-and-apples-services-strategy/ https://stratechery.com/2019/the-iphone-and-apples-services-...
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoGoogle is mainly concerned with protecting its own advertising turf and the data its platforms gobble up: search, YouTube, Gmail, Android, Maps. Apple may be gunning for market share in some of these areas, but hard to imagine Google losing its dominance here any time soon. YouTube and search are absolute behemoths, and monstrous cash cows. Seen through this lens, their enterprise offerings and free messaging services are almost an afterthought.
- noisy_boy 5y ago> June 2021: Google releases Google Chat to all customers and announces that “Rooms” will become “Spaces.” I still see "Rooms" in my Gmail window.
- resoluteteeth 5y agoI think they announced that it's going to change but it hasn't actually changed yet.
- thenoblesunfish 5y agoA comment I don't see here yet is that this is to some extent a consequence of Google's business model. The assumption seems to be that a company should be wary about doing what they're doing, because they'll lose business. But Google's not directly selling these services, in most cases. I assume they're happy with the way they do things, which is try a bunch of stuff in a slightly chaotic but fairly nimble way, be happy when some of it works well (Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs), and kill the rest. Frustrating for users, absolutely, but that's the company you're getting your free stuff from. It's pretty clear that this behavior isn't affecting their profits and maybe it's not even hurting their reputation, outside of circles like this one.
- oblio 5y ago> Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs All those were launched more than a decade ago, though.
- di4na 5y agoAnd not really iterated on... Maps got slightly better but Gmail and GDoc were uh... not really refactored into better stuff
- esprehn 5y agoMaps was entirely rewritten to use WebGL and support 3D. Gmail had the entire backend rewritten to scale much larger, priority inbox and categories, rich content emails, auto suggest as you type. Docs was completely rewritten, and they're working on another rewrite using canvas. Spreadsheets was rewritten twice, and a huge number of excel features ported over. It's true they don't overhaul the whole product every year, or make major UI adjustments, but a fair bit has changed in those products.
- JimDabell 5y ago> Maps was entirely rewritten > Gmail had the entire backend rewritten > Docs was completely rewritten > Spreadsheets was rewritten twice I think I’m starting to understand why these products very rarely receive new features, which I believe is the point di4na was making.
- vinhboy 5y ago> it’s almost possible to see Google’s strategy. Gmail exists for emails; Chat is the GChat / Hangouts-style messaging system for real-time conversations and group chats; Spaces is the Slack / Discord-style area for more persistent, larger rooms based on a particular topic or conversation; and there’s Meet for video chats. This is like the exact opposite of what we want. It was the best when my gmail tab was email, SMS, chat, video calling all in one.
- mraza007 5y agoI think Google tries so many things at once and this is why they end up killing most of their products. I remember when they launched an email app Inbox i loved using it but 3 years later they decided to kill it and guess what they decided to integrate inbox app features into gmail app and then I was forced to use it. On contrary if we compare apple to Google. Apple does one thing really better they integrate their services really well across all devices and that’s one of the reason its hard to leave Apple Ecosystem.
- rawoke083600 5y agoMan I missed, Google-Talk. Was just an awesome, working not too intrusive little chat app with decent enough phone capabilities !
- bscphil 5y agoThis mostly skims over two additional issues that add whole additional dimensions to the mess that is Google's messaging services: * How / whether you're allowed to integrate SMS / phone messages with web based chat (what we used to call instant messaging). E.g. can you get your text messages and voicemails on the computer? At some points you could, at some points you couldn't. At one point there was Google Voice, at another point Hangouts could do it, now you have to use the "Messages" app for texts, which is still relatively broken compared to either of the previous methods and doesn't support any kind of instant messaging. * The different rules that apply if you're using Google Fi. For example, the Messages help page [1] says you can turn on "chat features", which lets you send messages over data and get other conveniences like read receipts and large photos (because they're not sent over MMS). But wait, if you use Google Fi, if you want to get messages and make calls on your computer (i.e. with your phone off), you have to disable chat features. You can't have both. [2] It's absolutely insane. This worked 100% correctly with Hangouts - perfect integration. [1] https://support.google.com/messages/answer/7189714?hl=en https://support.google.com/messages/answer/7189714?hl=en [2] https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6188337 https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6188337
- koheripbal 5y agoThe removal of SMS and voice calling from Hangouts is hands down the most infuriating move. I'm really just waiting to have a free weekend to de-Google most of my connections to Google.
- bscphil 5y agoIt really was the most convenient messaging has ever been with Google. Basically equivalent to iMessage, with the added convenience that I knew way more people on Hangouts than iMessage anyway. Plus the Google Fi integration was perfect.
- rawland 5y agoBut what's the situation for most people? Many people's personal messaging eco-system looks like this: - Out of use: AIM - Out of use: IRQ - Out of use: IRC - Insert your old messanger: here - Privacy nerds: Signal - Feature fans: Telegram - Lonely people: Tinder - Parents-Generation: WhatsApp / FaceBook / deprecated - Brick phones (the real privacy nerds): SMS or E-Mail - Ahead of time people: delta.chat - Grandparents: E-Mail Is this any better? Let's have a different take on this: This company likes to experiment and innovate. :) Glad that this is still possible. Having said that: Probably naming the messengers in a different manner could receive an overhaul to confuse less people. And: Wouldn't route my chat traffic neither over Apple, Google or any other FAANG+.
- tannhaeuser 5y agoYou forgot XMPP which we used about ten years ago for team chat, and it worked well and still does. The idea being, like with SMS and email and phones and IRC, that multiple client and server implementations can inter-operate. Especially when chat software has been in use for well over 30 years now.
- benjaminwootton 5y agoGoogle have really made a hash over this entire space. I wouldn't even know which products to search for if I wanted to. They had multiple opportunities to dominate the markets which Zoom, Slack, Discord, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger own today. Simply iterating within a single brand rather than this ADHD approach would have got them there. They own controlling percentages of the email market and mobile market, it was all an enormous open goal.
- edly 5y agoI think it's a fair assessment to say that Google does not have a strategy. They're at their best when they were making something that hadn't been made before. Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Docs were/are in a league of their own in terms of offering, especially when they initially released, but now that Google is effectively trying to play catch-up and won't commit to anything that doesn't catch lightning in a bottle, I feel like confidence is remarkably low. It's not so bad trying something new every once in a while, but a strategy of assuming everyone will immediately jump ship from an old product that worked just fine to a new product that does less and sucks more is self-assured destruction. You can apply this to a lot of Google products, such as Google Play Music > YouTube Music, not just their messaging blunders.
- ibdf 5y agoHave used all of them services and at the end I gave it all up because of their lack of commitment to their products. Tired of so many features that eventually lead to nothing.