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> It works. It’s better than anything Google has attempted. The problem is, it’s not good enough. This is wrong. Google had a very good messaging system, Googl

• vondro 5y ago
  Oh Google Talk was sweet :) Also about Duo - even though I agree that it's kinda half-assed, strange interface app, it consistently has lower latency and better video quality than WhatsApp or Signal. I use it wherever my contact has it.
  • marticode 5y ago
    I'll second that. I have found it to have the best quality of all video calling alternatives and handle low bandwidth situations the best too. The interface is weird but focusing on just one thing and doing it well feels like a good choice.
  • waffle_maniac 5y ago
    You can walk out of your house and the call seamlessly switches from WiFi to cellular. Try doing that with WhatsApp or Signal.
    • paganel 5y ago
      > with WhatsApp I don't know about Signal because I don't use it but WhatsApp is also pretty good at that job. It also helps if one lives in a country/on a continent with a decent mobile internet service, I guess the US is not the best in that domain. Also, who still prefers to make a call in this day and age? You only do that if there's something urgent, text is the way.
      • waffle_maniac 5y ago
        > WhatsApp is also pretty good at that job Definitely not. And the US does have pretty decent mobile internet. > Also, who still prefers to make a call in this day and age? People who have their social anxiety under control. When I was younger I wanted to talk to the opposite sex on the phone so I could hear their voice and flirt with them. Maybe the younger generation gets turned on by emojis and memes?
    • jve 5y ago
      Google Meet does that. Confirmed it just yesterday. However it couldn't tolerate cellular network blackouts for a minute or two while on-the-go.
      • 1_player 5y ago
        > However it couldn't tolerate cellular network blackouts for a minute or two. No shit. QUIC is great but doesn't work when the Internet is unreachable.
        • jve 5y ago
          I mean couldn't it be solved on software side to automatically reconnect when I'm back online? Software developers are ingenious about working around the limitations of protocols and physics. I may be walking outside with gloves in a freezing temperature not excited about taking phone out. But actually I was in train so no issues. Second time I was cut off when I was walking and explaining things for a few minutes... only to realize I'm dropped out of conversation - again I needed to manually reconnect by explicitly tapping on that button.
• nottorp 5y ago
  Google Talk was originally just XMPP. Or at least XMPP compatible. I suppose that was too open for them.
  • pygy_ 5y ago
    They blamed their competitor's embrace/extend/extinguish behavior to pull out of it (IIRC MS and perhaps others had asymmetric compatibility with Google talk, and that's how they justified making Google talk proprietary).
    • nottorp 5y ago
      I was using jabber to connect to gtalk. I suppose that was unacceptable as well.
• kcb 5y ago
  Google Hangouts was almost there as well. At least in my circle it was actually fairly popular too.
  • encryptluks2 5y ago
    The mobile app really sucks though, especially when compared to Telegram.
  • baby 5y ago
    I could never understand how to use it personally, people would sometimes message me from gmail, I was utterly confused. I never used it because of that.
  • eloisius 5y ago
    At one point I had my Google Voice number tied to Hangouts, so SMS came through that app, and maybe one or two friends that also used Hangouts. I was never sure what client or integration they used, because it always seemed disjointed, like the app was made for someone else and I was an edge case so many of the features didn't make sense or didn't work, but I assume they did for someone. The most confusing part was the contacts tab, which had recommended contacts at the top instead of alphabetic ordering. It never made sense. It had about 50% numbers with no name associated. I assume just phone numbers of businesses I dialed at some point. The rest were a mixture of people I've emailed before but never called, someone I messaged frequently, and a bunch of people I haven't communicated with in any way since before Hangouts was even a thing, which I can't fathom why a recommender would decide I might want to call them now.
  • anko 5y ago
    I wonder if the management at google actually use their products. If they did, there is no way they would allow them to be killed. Apple's senior staff definitely use their products.
    • phreeza 5y ago
      They definitely use gsuite products all the time and in most cases exclusively (i.e. nobody uses Powerpoint, everyone uses Google Slides), but in other verticals (e.g. phones or laptops) it's not so clear cut.
• encryptluks2 5y ago
  All that is left to do now really is figure out ways to make deploying something similar easy for the average user without Google.
• ip26 5y ago
  I could be way off base, but I vaguely remember Google Talk being unreliable across multiple clients, something we take for granted now.
  • oriolid 5y ago
    I remember that at some point it felt exceptional that I could switch between Nokia N9 and browser on my desktop, continue the same chat and get new message notifications on the right device. But the integration broke a lot and of course shutting down Talk broke it completely.
  • jhasse 5y ago
    To be fair I don't remember any chat client having figured that out at that time.
• mobilio 5y ago
  I still miss Talk because was so easy and intuitive...
  • NL807 5y ago
    I liked its simplicity. It was an efficient app designed for one purpose and did it well.
    • vanviegen 5y ago
      Yes, and messages could be found by Gmail search. Simpler times.
    • eknkc 5y ago
      We basically built our first startup communicating over GTalk. Slack was not a thing. Some people were using Skype but GTalk was simple and it worked just fine.
• artursapek 5y ago
  I imagine being a product manager at google is a special type of hell
  • mehrdada 5y ago
    I wouldn't say so... It pays well and has relatively little accountability (proof: look at how many chat apps failed while PMs congratulated themselves launching them). You might not be able to have any meaningful impact but you won't suffer much consequences either. Heck if you play your cards right you may even land the CEO spot.
    • artursapek 5y ago
      Hah great response. I guess if impact doesn't matter then it sounds wonderful
• sylens 5y ago
  They pivoted to Hangouts to boost Google+ when they were chasing Facebook. This is also why they killed Google Reader. So much collateral damage with nothing to show for it.
  • nextos 5y ago
    > So much collateral damage with nothing to show for it. Yes. I think if Google wants to keep its dominant position, they need to rethink how they do management. What I said in the parent post about Google Talk could also apply to other product lines. They often release good things, like Nexus tablets or the Pixel C, only to kill them shortly afterwards. As a consumer, I don't take most of their offerings seriously because they are so short-lived and confusing. Why shall I put my money on something that might be killed or phased out soon? From what I've heard from some insiders, other Alphabet branches seem to have equivalent management issues. It's sad because they have a significant amount of resources and they could be delivering tons of value to the society.
    • hiptobecubic 5y ago
      I've mentioned this before, but I agree wholly. Google's product "strategy" gets shit on all the time (killedbygoogle.com), but the real issue is that the company is structured as if that's what they want to have happen. It's a loose association of warring VPs trying to establish big enough fiefdoms to be able to buy a third house. There's no real benefit to maintaining existing products for them. They just want to reorg things so they can amass more and more reports and justify their next enormous equity refresh. Killing old products to "make room" for new hotness is a pretty good way to do that.
      • bee_rider 5y ago
        That sounds like the stories we used to hear of Microsoft. It only took them like, what, 2 decades to get things back together?
        • pmontra 5y ago
• buttocks 5y ago
  Mobile technology evolved very quickly but XMPP did not. I remember using Pidgin to chat on Google Talk. Then Google decided (rightly) that more secure auth was needed, and implemented an XEP to add OIDC authentication. Now third-party clients had to decide whether they wanted to implement Google's auth, or not. Ultimately it is easier to control the protocol and the app--and along with those, the tracking, the display of ads, the feature set, and so on.
  • mavhc 5y ago
    That's the fundamental problem, non standard products can iterate way faster than standards based products. Look at all the new features email has! Of course as we're on HN we obviously hate anything but plain text, but that's not true of most people
    • ryandrake 5y ago
      I mean, does E-mail need new features? I’d argue that it is successful and ubiquitous because it doesn’t change and have a half dozen companies breaking compatibility by trying to out-feature each other. Th Internet could use more applications like E-mail and fewer like the chat mess we have. Chat should be the deadest-simplest protocol/app on the planet. It’s sending text… That’s pretty much the first thing a developer learns how to do when they learn network programming. We should be able to send text from one computer to another in a way that is compatible no matter what company’s client you use. Yet nothing has managed to gain traction.
      • mavhc 5y ago
        Well, it got html and rtf and attachments bodged into it, and never got encryption working. And it's plagued with spam and attacks and fakes. Chat is sending text, and files, and encryption, and now doing all that to groups of people, which means you need group managers and permissions, and authentication of those users. Might as well add video and audio calls now you have an address book, as phone companies can't do that properly it seems
• winternett 5y ago
  I really can't stand texting personally. It astonishes me how much it's a step backwards in innovation for the convenience of companies being able to target and index conversations that people think are private better. Yet still, even voice recognition can't recognize when I say names of my friends that are from foreign countries, and it doesn't connect me with strangers that speak other languages. I think our tech focus on typed text has really stunted the growth of tech in the past few years a lot, also it does nothing to make sure our interaction become easier with differences in learning capabilities and disabilities that exist in our society. It's really a shame that voice recognition hasn't been pushed further because of all the effort put into requiring everyone to use tiny phone keyboards and frustrating emojis just to convey a message and then waiting for someone else to respond in a way that completely distracts people during normal activities like driving or crossing a street. It's simply not good progress to continue down that texting-based/focused path in my opinion for future progress.
  • mehrdada 5y ago
    Text is much less disruptive to the people around you and also private. I probably would not be comfortable reading out most of my texts aloud without thinking twice even if recognition were perfect. (But it is not really just text. People send multimedia content all the time.)
    • winternett 5y ago
      I understand your point, but there are numerous advancements like noise cancelling and other things that would be better developed if we weren't so focused on texting. For example, a phone could emit a static (non-irritating) tone to isolate spoken communication and then filter it out of voice communication. Simple sound-proof booths could be placed in many locations to allow for call privacy as well. At the end of the day, texting is probably just as insecure with cameras everywhere and with the fact that the messages are transmitted and retained over mobile networks in the same way as audio and video files would be, although the audio and video files would not inherently contain direct transcripts of the communication.
• ink404 5y ago
  Google's stock Android Messages app has been consistently good for the last few years. Simple interface that doesn't try to do too much - good search functionality and a web client if you'd like to send SMS/RCS from your computer.
  • fuzzylightbulb 5y ago
    I generally like the app, but I find the search to be hit or miss, and it kills me that I cannot search at all in the web client. It would also be trivial for them to coordinate backups of your messages, but this functionality requires a 3rd party app.
• pvg 5y ago
  It didn't have E2E encryption, sync across devices or work as a transparent(-ish) SMS substitute/overlay. It was more of a nice but late-to-the-party AIM clone, which wasn't really the direction of instant messaging was headed. Google's IM strategy was and is a mess but gchat wasn't even in the same category of messenger by the time Apple got serious about iMessage.
• headmelted 5y ago
  This article is quite frustrating in a few ways because I feel like it misses the point on both sides of the fence: Google’s ethos was clearly to throw a bunch of teams at the problem and see what sticks. From a planning perspective it might seem sensible but for the user it’s deeply confusing: they just want to know from Google which one app is blessed and will be supported for the long haul so they can get on with their day. Apple OTOH absolutely nailed this. Messages is there, it’s always been there. Sure the i was removed from the word but it was still the same app. Simple, direct, everyone on the same protocol without any confusion. In terms of the complaints about things like tapbacks - The last thing I want is more than a single row of reactions. The point is for them to be simple and universally understood instantly.
• renewiltord 5y ago
  Google Talk had message delivery issues on bad networks. iMessage still works there.
• mro_name 5y ago
  > the first one was great the curse of too much money at hand. New hires urge to innovate.
• odiroot 5y ago
  Nokia N900 was my best instant messaging experience ever. I had Google Talk, Skype, my country's Gadu-Gadu and later Facebook chat in the same app! The same uniform interface with SMS. I had one simple button to switch protocols. I could also easily see online status of my contact on all of these (and fall back to SMS if they weren't online).
  • theshrike79 5y ago
    The Nokia N950 was a dream phone, too bad it got killed because of internal company politics.
  • bni 5y ago
    I had this too. Too bad normal users didnt value this. When I showed it to friends at the time they were mostly confused about it, or didnt "get" the value of it.
    • bierjunge 5y ago
      There is absolutely a value in it. I'm using my phone mainly for communication and I could kill for a physical keyboard, especially for a vertical slider like the old Blackberry Priv. There is the F(x)tec Pro1X [0] which looks similar to the Nokia N900. It's a little bit too expensive for the specs (about 740€ for the 8GB/256GB version with Snapdragon 662), but could be a nice phone. Or maybe OnwardMobility will succeed and release the new Blackberry this year and it won't be a piece of crap. /s [0] https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x
• stackbutterflow 5y ago
  I remember google talk. There was a time when everything Google released was hip, minimalist, fast and to the point. Google search, maps, Gmail, hangout. How things have changed.
• yftsui 5y ago
  Google talk was a nice small piece of software running on a computer with limited features comparing with Skype. Even with Gmail auto loading Google talk web app, it did not gain enough traction say replace Skype or MSN messenger. Saying it is a good mobile phone app is a huge exaggeration, I had used it back in the 2008 era, the experience was horrible, almost exact opposite of “it just works”.