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The future of Currents and the next generation of collaboration in Spaces
- taubek 5y agoI've used Currents quite a lot few years ago. It had some content formatting issues that weren't there in Google+ but all in all it was a good service.
- imglorp 5y agoIt made it to the list already - https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- hughrr 5y agoWell fuck that’s a huge pile of corpses.
- mattkevan 5y agoReading through that site it’s amazing the amount of weird random stuff Google does. There’s the ‘throw stuff at the wall’ product strategy, and then there’s the ‘no strategy at all’ strategy. I mean ‘Google Bookmarks - a web-based bookmarking service not integrated with any other Google services’. I know this one’s an outlier as it’s old for a Google product, but if it’s not integrated then why bother? Part of me thinks it’s because they’ve got a lot of people and an near infinite amount of money and there’s only so many people you can throw at sticking ads everywhere, so everyone else has got to do something. Might as well write another messaging app.
- jfoster 5y agoThis list is so long that they should consider summarising it at the top; a graph tracking new production introductions vs retirements, so that we can see whether Google is getting any better at creating lasting products.
- jsiepkes 5y agoI think that at somepoint Google will find itself in a position TV stations found themselves in around 2008-ish; TV stations had created the habbit of cancelling everything that wasn't an instant hit in it's first season. In turn this became a self-fulfilling prophecy because people wouldn't watch the first season. They didn't want to be left out in the cold with some season 1 cliffhanger which was never resolved because the series never got renewed for a second season. ...AND YES I'M STILL PISSED ABOUT FIREFLY!
- alisonkisk 5y agoCurrents (G+) is over 10 years old. TV shows stopped doing season cliffhangers, which is good.
- ltultraweight 5y agoAccording to @killedbygoogle on twitter[1] it's not 10 years old. [1] https://twitter.com/killedbygoogle/status/1491840040053391361 https://twitter.com/killedbygoogle/status/149184004005339136...
- zamadatix 5y agoCurrents used to be "Google+ for G Suite" but Google+ shut down in 2019 so it was renamed to Currents at that time. I don't think it was over a decade old though, that sounds like a previous product also named Currents that was shutdown prior to Google+ for G Suite being a thing.
- teraflop 5y agoYou might be thinking of the old Google Currents, which was a completely different product (a "digital newsstand" app) with the same name.
- Macha 5y agoNetflix has certainly got into this position for me.
- mavhc 5y agoMakes sense, they're moving everything to Chat because people want everything in 1 place, >1 window is hard for normal people
- alisonkisk 5y agoWorkspace already solved that by embedding every app in the sidebar of every other app.
- broeng 5y agoA Google Chat service? Which one?
- DocTomoe 5y agoThe next one, of course. It's always the next one.
- easrng 5y agoThey've consolidated mostly on https://chat.google.com https://chat.google.com. Hangouts is nearly dead (Starting a video call just sends a message with a Google meet link, and messaging is compatible with Chat so there's no barrier for switching) and Allo is dead and Talk is long dead. Basically the only things they have for chat now are Chat (basically a Slack clone), Messages (a SMS/MMS/RCS app for Android), and Voice (VoIP with SMS/MMS).
- mavhc 5y agoThe one called Chat, that's why it was capitalised.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoEspacially sinced a lot of people use their phone way more than their computer (if they have one), and multitasking on the phone is extra hard.
- easrng 5y agoRIP Google+, for real this time I guess.
- sidcool 5y agoCurrents is still alive? Mighty nice of Google. Don't think anyone would have noticed its absence.
- rgrieselhuber 5y agoNever even heard of it.
- dbbk 5y agoIt was kind of meant to be an intranet, but they got to releasing v1 and then seemingly never really developed it any further.
- NullInvictus 5y ago> but they got to releasing v1 and then seemingly never really developed it any further. Except for the core pieces, this is a distressing description of most google products.
- easrng 5y agoIt's just the dregs of Google+ with a UI redesign and a rebrand, only available for GSuite customers.
- AcerbicZero 5y agoI think I’ve reached peak apathy regarding googles products. If the title was “Google retires Gmail and Search” I still wouldn’t be surprised. At this point the only surprising thing about a Google service is that it hasn’t already been retired.
- dilawar 5y agoWe are a small startup, recently moved to Zoho from Google. Except of the Google calendar, we don't miss a thing. The experience with Zoho Work drive is even better for collaborative work. Though its CEO association with RSS annoys me a bit but eh!
- andybak 5y ago> RSS Might be worth disambiguating that for the HN crowd. I'm sure most people would assume you meant the syndication format. I certainly had to read it twice.
- joshuaissac 5y agoAt first, I thought this was about the Google Currents news aggregator app that competed with Flipboard, and had somewhat similar functionality to the modern 'Google' app. But no, that was a different Currents which was killed a long time ago. This Currents is an enterprise communication app.
- hotpotamus 5y agoI do appreciate the irony that they had an old Currents.
- mft_ 5y agoGood. We have Currents at work. It seemed to be pushed on us, through being corporate G-suite (or whatever it's branded as now?) users. It's just not good. It's a n+1 information channel, but: a) it isn't integrated into anything else (unless you subscribe to fill your email inbox with updates) meaning you either have to consciously remember to check it, or you miss out on a bunch of stuff that's shared there. b) it doesn't have enough else as a 'draw' to make it into enough of an interesting social network to hook you into using it organically.
- gandutraveler 5y agoAt this point Google should name their messaging products with the engineer's name who got promoted for that project. How many messaging brands did Google create ? I can recall at least 6
- dmitrygr 5y agoRetroactively renaming Google plus to Gundotra+ does have a ring to it
- topicseed 5y agoThe new integrated view for Gmail looks promising. I run my company and team using Workspace and ClickUp, and Workspace was just not chat-friendly so far despite Rooms. Can't wait for our account to move to the new version/design.
- jfoster 5y ago> The new integrated view for Gmail looks promising. It's difficult to get excited about anything new from Google even if it's good. It's all disposable. Won't last. Eventually, they will replace it with something else. What they replace it with might be even better, or it might be worse. It's a Googlcoaster.
- KKKKkkkk1 5y agoThe book of Jeremiah had this to say about Google+: “They will not mourn for him: ‘Alas, my brother! Alas, my sister!’ They will not mourn for him: ‘Alas, my master! Alas, his splendor!’ He will have the burial of a donkey— dragged away and thrown outside the gates of Jerusalem.”