Most of the Google Hangouts API is being killed on April 25th
xda-developers.com
xda-developers.com
The hangouts API was mostly for little widgets and extensions that would running the video chat platform on desktop only.
They haven't worked on the new UI for almost 6 months now, they never worked on mobile, and you could count the number of apps on 2 hands.
The only one I ever used was a thing where you could draw on a friend's face during a video call, and even that was a one time thing.
Hangouts isn't being shutdown, they aren't gutting it's functionality, they are simplifying the system.
What this change will do is chop off those offering free services at the knees and drive the premium services to Twilio, etc.
Google's a business. Why does it have the responsibility to pickup the tab for these businesses?
Every time Google does something like this, it becomes a bit less beloved by consumers, loses a bit more of that halo it had in the early 2000s and finds itself having a bit harder time with regulators in the future.
In Google's IPO filing:
"We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place. With our products, Google connects people and information all around the world for free. We are adding other powerful services such as Gmail that provides an efficient one gigabyte Gmail account for free. By releasing services for free, we hope to help bridge the digital divide."
"We believe that our user focus is the foundation of our success to date. We also believe that this focus is critical for the creation of long-term value. We do not intend to compromise our user focus for short-term economic gain."
It's just that they have powerful monopolies that fund pretty much anything they want to do and there are powerful network/lock-in effects for email, documents, calendars, chat, mobile app sales, etc and even YouTube.
You're free to join a different chat network but none of your friends are there. You can change to another calendar provider but you'll still have on in gmail and people will share things to it. You can upload your video to Vimeo, but it won't have anywhere near the ability to attract traffic as it would on YouTube and it probably won't do as well in search results. Feel free to write an app for non-Google Android users, but not many people will buy it or even encounter it (unless you're in a market like China and are on a local monopoly's platform).
Google has hurt their brand. They're just not that dependent on people liking them anymore. In a lot of ways it's like Microsoft was 20 years ago.
iOS apps generate more revenue than Android
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-app-store-revenue-per-u...
I suspect he means Android-without-Play-store, rather than phone-without-Android.
I'm not sure what their strategy is, but they seem to be flodding the market with apps that nobody uses. Meanwhile, a few [other] 2-3 apps seem to be used 90% of the time.
Their best shot at this point, IMHO, is to buy some [very popular] existing product, and merge all their chat apps into that one.
You can create what would be a "group conversation" in slack, then add more people and rename it to whatever you want.