4 ms·

> How many messaging systems has Google had over the years? About 20: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of

> How many messaging systems has Google had over the years? About 20: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
> Google once had a functional competitor to iMessage called Google Hangouts. Circa 2015, Hangouts was a messaging powerhouse Is it still a powerhouse if no one uses it?
- mjevans 5y ago
  Hangouts was killed; I was actively forced to migrate my SMS stuff back to Google Voice, and Google Duo is what replaced it for video chat. The 'internet chat' they introduced a different service called 'Chat' which runs in some consumer version of Google Workspaces. I also really hate XML based chat, but the OG standard failed because the federated clients had a poor required minimum standard for interoperability and other stacks E.G. Microsoft's whatever version of it ... I actually forget offhand but it was something anti-competitive that also broke how useful it was outside of their particular implementation.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    I did not use it and did not know anyone who did... glad to hear it did have some users after all.
  - pooper 5y ago
    > Google Duo is what replaced it for video chat We were also supposed to get chat with Google Allo but they practically killed it before launch. > Before launch, Google touted strong privacy in the app, with particular emphasis on messages stored "transiently and in non-identifiable form". However, at launch, privacy was significantly rolled back, with Google keeping logs of messages indefinitely (or until the user deletes messages) in an effort to improve the app's "smart reply" feature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Allo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Allo
SilasX 5y ago
Hah I was just linking another Ars Technica article on that theme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901707

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

> Google once had a functional competitor to iMessage called Google Hangouts. Circa 2015, Hangouts was a messaging powerhouse Is it still a powerhouse if no one uses it?

mjevans 5y ago
Hangouts was killed; I was actively forced to migrate my SMS stuff back to Google Voice, and Google Duo is what replaced it for video chat. The 'internet chat' they introduced a different service called 'Chat' which runs in some consumer version of Google Workspaces. I also really hate XML based chat, but the OG standard failed because the federated clients had a poor required minimum standard for interoperability and other stacks E.G. Microsoft's whatever version of it ... I actually forget offhand but it was something anti-competitive that also broke how useful it was outside of their particular implementation.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  I did not use it and did not know anyone who did... glad to hear it did have some users after all.
- pooper 5y ago
  > Google Duo is what replaced it for video chat We were also supposed to get chat with Google Allo but they practically killed it before launch. > Before launch, Google touted strong privacy in the app, with particular emphasis on messages stored "transiently and in non-identifiable form". However, at launch, privacy was significantly rolled back, with Google keeping logs of messages indefinitely (or until the user deletes messages) in an effort to improve the app's "smart reply" feature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Allo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Allo

SilasX 5y ago

Hah I was just linking another Ars Technica article on that theme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901707