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There's a messaging app inside G Pay too. I don't think anyone would be actually surprised at that fact.

ng12 5y ago
I wonder if building a messaging app is the secret to promotion at Google. I cant think of any other reason they would have so many.
- WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
  Building new useless shit is the secret to succeeding as a developer. You either build some shit or end up not getting a promotion / new job.
  - omnicognate 5y ago
    You mean the secret to being a developer is... developing?
    - ForHackernews 5y ago
      Certainly it's not a career that rewards maintaining legacy systems or cleaning up technical debt.
      - still_grokking 5y ago
        That's for the new hires. The experts who created those things move on.
        Kye 5y ago
        It sounds like the problem at Google is no one's maintaining things once the person responsible for it moves on.
        ikiris 5y ago
        Maintaining something at google is basically career suicide.
        spoonjim 5y ago
        Yes, which is why the least skilled developers maintain the products, which is why they eventually get canned. This is not inevitable in software —- it is specific to Google. At business software companies, for example, maintenance is not career suicide, so you have very senior engineers who work on improving the engineering systems to detect and fix bugs, leading to a more effective long term software maintenance capability.
        cmrdporcupine 5y ago
        Maintaining and improving core systems is what entire large teams in Google's Ads, Search, Core, etc. teams do, and yes, they get promotion for it. It's often not very sexy work, but it is recognized. It's really the consumer-facing & consumer hardware teams that have this novelty-seeking-promotion problem, IMHO. (I've worked on both)
        UncleMeat 5y ago
        Promotion rates in Core Dev are higher than normal across the company. The idea that you cannot get promoted writing tooling or making engineers efficient or keeping the codebase clean is simply not supported by data.
        plorkyeran 5y ago
        What it sounds like is that if you're maintaining things it needs to be something important to the business to get promoted, but if you create something new then it doesn't have to be.
        UncleMeat 5y ago
        I'd edit that to say that it is easier to incorrectly believe that something new is important to the business but that you really do need to make the same impact argument in both cases.
- Graffur 5y ago
  My guess would be that it's interesting and achievable work. It is probably being done by people who have never built a messaging app so there is lots to learn.
- bborud 5y ago
  Because for the life of them, Google can’t seem to create a single messaging system that works well. If they could simply make ONE system that works as a standalone product, has a decent API available to internal developers and external. That would be a start. But no. They have to make it part of something else. Always. And they always miss the target on usability.
  - tdeck 5y ago
    That's not fair, gChat / Google Talk worked pretty well back in the day. I could even search my messages on mobile, which is something Hangouts never managed to offer in the many years after the migration.
    - chii 5y ago
      and the reason it works so well is because gchat is based on xmpp which makes it more open to interoperability and access to pre-made libraries etc. And you can use any clients supporting xmpp. management at google must have decided that interoperability is a weakness and killed it.
      - bborud 5y ago
        Look at my comment above. Yes, at the time XMPP interoperability at the edges seemed like a good idea, but XMPP wasn't a good standard. No, the reason it worked well was because Google made their own backend that could actually scale and which wasn't based on XMPP at all. (I actually spent a lot of time reading the code and talking to the people who designed Talk while I was at Google, because that project had a lot of really good lessons in how to deal with challenges in distributed systems). The XMPP interop was nice, but it was just that: a client interface adapter. I can't think of a single XMPP backend that even comes close to working as well as the custom architecture Google used for Talk. Actually, XMPP is the worst kind of standard you can have. Something that superficially looks like a good solution, but doesn't lend itself to clear, correct and performant implementation. And at the same time is seen as THE standard for chat. So people won't be inclined to "start over". But if we're going to have chat interop, that's what we have to do. I'm not kidding. If XMPP was any good you would see companies that do chat products at scale prefer it, at least in the backend. Imagine all the time you can save. But they mostly don't. Ask people who develop chat systems why not. (Zoom is the only company that comes to mind, but chat isn't the main focus of that product, just an aside) Google killed XMPP interop because it was a pain in the ass and a technical obstacle. And then chat gradually became a closed affair because we, the developer community, just didn't come up with something that worked well enough to replace XMPP.
- redler 5y ago
  It’s obviously reductive and unfair to say so, but sometimes it seems like strategy is an emergent property at Google.
encryptluks2 5y ago
They just repurposed their awful app that was entirely geared towards the Indian market and used it to replace their descent Pay app that respected privacy.
shp0ngle 5y ago
There is a messaging app inside Google Maps and a different one inside Google Photos (I think).
achow 5y ago
The messaging app is not about chatting, but it is about transaction documentation and history of it. It is actually very useful feature, one can do pre & post transaction related chat - which captures the 'negotiations' or 'agreements' around that transaction. Subsequently the same becomes a proof of record, which later can be pulled up incase of any disputes.

ng12 5y ago

I wonder if building a messaging app is the secret to promotion at Google. I cant think of any other reason they would have so many.

WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
Building new useless shit is the secret to succeeding as a developer. You either build some shit or end up not getting a promotion / new job.
- omnicognate 5y ago
  You mean the secret to being a developer is... developing?
  - ForHackernews 5y ago
    Certainly it's not a career that rewards maintaining legacy systems or cleaning up technical debt.
    - still_grokking 5y ago
      That's for the new hires. The experts who created those things move on.
      - Kye 5y ago
        It sounds like the problem at Google is no one's maintaining things once the person responsible for it moves on.
        ikiris 5y ago
        Maintaining something at google is basically career suicide.
      - spoonjim 5y ago
        Yes, which is why the least skilled developers maintain the products, which is why they eventually get canned. This is not inevitable in software —- it is specific to Google. At business software companies, for example, maintenance is not career suicide, so you have very senior engineers who work on improving the engineering systems to detect and fix bugs, leading to a more effective long term software maintenance capability.
        cmrdporcupine 5y ago
        Maintaining and improving core systems is what entire large teams in Google's Ads, Search, Core, etc. teams do, and yes, they get promotion for it. It's often not very sexy work, but it is recognized. It's really the consumer-facing & consumer hardware teams that have this novelty-seeking-promotion problem, IMHO. (I've worked on both)
        UncleMeat 5y ago
        Promotion rates in Core Dev are higher than normal across the company. The idea that you cannot get promoted writing tooling or making engineers efficient or keeping the codebase clean is simply not supported by data.
        plorkyeran 5y ago
        What it sounds like is that if you're maintaining things it needs to be something important to the business to get promoted, but if you create something new then it doesn't have to be.
        UncleMeat 5y ago
        I'd edit that to say that it is easier to incorrectly believe that something new is important to the business but that you really do need to make the same impact argument in both cases.
Graffur 5y ago
My guess would be that it's interesting and achievable work. It is probably being done by people who have never built a messaging app so there is lots to learn.
bborud 5y ago
Because for the life of them, Google can’t seem to create a single messaging system that works well. If they could simply make ONE system that works as a standalone product, has a decent API available to internal developers and external. That would be a start. But no. They have to make it part of something else. Always. And they always miss the target on usability.
- tdeck 5y ago
  That's not fair, gChat / Google Talk worked pretty well back in the day. I could even search my messages on mobile, which is something Hangouts never managed to offer in the many years after the migration.
  - chii 5y ago
    and the reason it works so well is because gchat is based on xmpp which makes it more open to interoperability and access to pre-made libraries etc. And you can use any clients supporting xmpp. management at google must have decided that interoperability is a weakness and killed it.
    - bborud 5y ago
      Look at my comment above. Yes, at the time XMPP interoperability at the edges seemed like a good idea, but XMPP wasn't a good standard. No, the reason it worked well was because Google made their own backend that could actually scale and which wasn't based on XMPP at all. (I actually spent a lot of time reading the code and talking to the people who designed Talk while I was at Google, because that project had a lot of really good lessons in how to deal with challenges in distributed systems). The XMPP interop was nice, but it was just that: a client interface adapter. I can't think of a single XMPP backend that even comes close to working as well as the custom architecture Google used for Talk. Actually, XMPP is the worst kind of standard you can have. Something that superficially looks like a good solution, but doesn't lend itself to clear, correct and performant implementation. And at the same time is seen as THE standard for chat. So people won't be inclined to "start over". But if we're going to have chat interop, that's what we have to do. I'm not kidding. If XMPP was any good you would see companies that do chat products at scale prefer it, at least in the backend. Imagine all the time you can save. But they mostly don't. Ask people who develop chat systems why not. (Zoom is the only company that comes to mind, but chat isn't the main focus of that product, just an aside) Google killed XMPP interop because it was a pain in the ass and a technical obstacle. And then chat gradually became a closed affair because we, the developer community, just didn't come up with something that worked well enough to replace XMPP.
redler 5y ago
It’s obviously reductive and unfair to say so, but sometimes it seems like strategy is an emergent property at Google.

encryptluks2 5y ago

They just repurposed their awful app that was entirely geared towards the Indian market and used it to replace their descent Pay app that respected privacy.

shp0ngle 5y ago

There is a messaging app inside Google Maps and a different one inside Google Photos (I think).

achow 5y ago

The messaging app is not about chatting, but it is about transaction documentation and history of it. It is actually very useful feature, one can do pre & post transaction related chat - which captures the 'negotiations' or 'agreements' around that transaction. Subsequently the same becomes a proof of record, which later can be pulled up incase of any disputes.