Google Splits Hangouts into Chat and Meet | Hacker News Reader

Google Splits Hangouts into Chat and Meet

techcrunch.com

157 pointsashishgandhi149 comments

Poe's Law as applied to enterprise messaging platforms.

Dear Google,

Please make one amazing chat app. Just one. Merge Allo, Duo, Chat, Hangouts, Meet, Messenger, Voice, and your RCS platform into one extensible platform with third party integrations.

The comments in this thread? They are not flattering. It is not a sign of joy that people comment on Google releasing a new chat app, or confusing your branding even further.

Here's a quick question: I have a friend on Android, I have an iPhone, how do I message them? What's your best solution. What if I want to switch from messaging to voice? What if I want to make a video call? What if I want to invite a third person? iPhones make it easy to transition between different types of communication, and provide useful SMS sync to computers.

Slack, Microsoft's Teams, and surprisingly Discord, are all moving in the direction of being a single hub for communication. Admittedly, Slack and Teams don't make it easy (yet) to message people outside your organization. Discord does, and they're beating you to the punch, quelle surprise. All of the above platforms are easy to set up on the web and smartphones.

So please, please stop this proliferation. Stop footgunning yourselves on messaging platforms. Build one, make it amazing, and devote resources to making it work for users and organizations.

Why stop there? Gmail is communications as well, so include email too. And snail mail too, so add Fedex/UPS service into it. And fax, we can't forget about fax.

But hey, connectivity is just a section of productivity, and docs, slides, sheets, drive is all productivity, so add it all to the same app, as well as google plus. You also use the app store to get your company's apps, so add the play store as well.

Finding the destination for a business meeting is also productivity, so add maps inside it as well, and translate, since you might be running meetings and emails in different languages, plus keep for note-taking, calendar, my business, contacts, forms, groups, etc.

Congrats, you just designed Lotus Notes.

Or Android.

Lotus Notes didn't have video, and sound or real-time chat functionality. It does integrate a spreadsheet, decent word processor, calendar and task list. Google Docs with its Calendar and Gmail integration is close enough.

Integrating different use cases is different from interoperability. For example, make it easy to share a file on drive via email and chat does not require drive to be integrated. Likewise meet (new contacts, social net) vs chat (known contacts, rooms) might be a good split if they interact nicely together.

Splitting chat from email is a stretch, much like with voice from text or from video. Or simple images.

What Google is doing is create apps that do not work together with each other.

Lotus Notes did have chat. And voice. And IPTV. And fax services. And databases. HR tools. Expense tools. Business process tools and whatever else you can think of.

And the apps do work together, apparently. From the announcement they're integrated with Drive and the entire permission system. I'd guess there are far more integrations to come.

I think you're being a bit hyperbolic - everyone seems to see snail mail / fax as quite different from electronic communication methods.

I've found most people tend to see email as the "slow/deliberate" electronic communication, and IM/Messages/SMS as the "fast/extemporaneous", so even conflating GMail doesn't really make sense (why do you think Wave failed?).

Oh come on, this is a ridiculous argument. He's asking for what most of us want: a unified SMS and video calling app for our phones. I too would prefer they just fixed and refined Hangouts, rather than muddy the picture with a host of new options. This is what we call fragmentation. I just want some ubiquitous communications app which allows me to text and video call my friends and family no matter if they're on iPhone or Android. Hangouts was going to do this, but apparently now they've pivoted...But I'm not going to go through the hassle of getting all my friends and family to switch to some new app. So I'm disgruntled too.

We don't want one app which does literally everything, just one app for all our mobile communications: primarily SMS and video calling these days.

He's asking for what most of us want: a unified SMS and video calling app for our phones.

Is that what you want or what most people want? I like WhatsApp more than Allo/Duo, especially for the desktop integration and a few other features, but I'm a dinosaur who uses desktop. Nobody uses desktop anymore, but until Google launches a desktop client, my hate of typing on a smartphone keyboard will keep me away from those apps. If they launch, I'd guess that my existing network on WhatsApp will keep me away from them as well.

"They're not addressing my own usage profile" != "They are not addressing a large % of the potential users".

It seems to me like they are aiming to make one amazing chat app. It's called GSuite.

For example, it'd be very useful if you could collaboratively edit a document in a chat app. So should your uber chat app swallow Google Docs too? That would be a beast, and the HN would scream.

No, you make a bunch of smaller apps that embed, interoperate and integrate.

And once you've built a bunch of integration points for your own apps, then you document them and make them available to third parties. Voila first-class fully dog-fooded integration points rather than third party integrations being distinctly second class citizens.

> I have a friend on Android, I have an iPhone, how do I message them? What's your best solution. What if I want to switch from messaging to voice?

Install hangouts on the iphone. It's not going anywhere anytime soon.

Or you can have your friend install iMessage on the android. Wait apple doesn't port it's apps to android? I'm stunned.

+1 to this.

I think one party or other will always have to maintain an additional app to support that use case. I have a group chat with a few friends who have flitted between Android and iOS and the group has continued seamlessly for years.

I'm not sure if there's a reason to go Hangouts over Whatsapp, other than both parties having to maintain an additional app

Hangouts isn't going anywhere ?

We've all heard that many times before and with so many other apps duplicating Hangouts functionality I wouldn't be so confident.

The previous incarnation of what's now hangouts was seamlessly updated on whatever phone I had at the time when it was phased out. I don't even remember the name because it doesn't matter. Been on android since froyo without issue of the messenger app being retired.

It's not going anywhere anytime soon like I said and when it does, it'll get updated with the next thing and still have chat, voice, and video.

>> Please make one amazing chat app. Just one. Merge Allo, Duo, Chat, Hangouts, Meet, Messenger, Voice, and your RCS platform into one extensible platform with third party integrations.

But then how will their under utilized engineers get a promotion?

This. A thousand times this.

First I stopped using Google+ (I mean: it isn't any good). Then over time I stopped logging Adium into Google Talk, because fewer and fewer people I know use it. I never started using Allo or Duo.

I found it utterly useless. But what made me finally give up on it for good was their G+ username (handle) policy.

They had already decided the first X characters of my handle (FirstnameLastname______) and then I had to add something to it. And not at all any of the usernames I wanted were taken. Some are still not taken. I realised this worthless piece of software/service isn't worth the time and Google has been proving it since then.

I tested Allo and Duo the day it was released. That's it. Work has GSuite so have to use Hangouts.

I have a friend who's still using Google Talk via her corporate IT solution, whose name I forget; she and my wife are the only two I know of still using it. I could probably convince my wife to switch to Allo, but my friend can't integrate it with her corporate solution, so switching basically means I can't chat with her anymore.

Monolithic apps suffer from design for the least common denominator. Business team chat and calling/texting your friend are entirely different problems and deserve different solutions.

I would suggest you check out Discord, which works well for both the team and individual use cases in one user interface. The way they accomplish this is by having "Friends" (a familiar analogy for anyone who has used chat applications from the 2000s and current social media) as well as "Servers", which are akin to teams.

Joining servers is very easy, creating servers - they are perhaps inaccurately named - is instantaneous, and each server can contain groups, voice and text channels. Adding friends is easy, and from the friends menu it's easy to message or begin a call with anyone and create ad hoc group chats and calls.

Perhaps your belief that they are entirely different problems and necessitate different solutions is based in the fact that they the market has thus far assumed that to be true.

I've used discord. My family is never going to use discord or a discord-like app. For that, we need sms or MMS.

One of the problems with discord is that it becomes very bloated to use (fromm mobile). It takes 3-4 interactions to get to the friends list so I can message someone. With sms/mms/allo/fb messenger, I open the app and my friends list is just right there, staring me in the face.

Optimized for different usecases comes to mind.

Hmm, my version of Discord either points me at the friends list or restores previous state with 2 or 3 taps max to message a friend. (top left hamburger menu, tap friends, pick a friend)

Is what you describe specific to iOS version?

What is missing most is video chat.

I was speakng about android. I think there's a vast difference between 0 and 2-3 interactions. I mean in many ways, Discord is 2 apps in one, you swap between them by swapping between the servers and friends views, and I think its worth recognizing that fact.

Why would an Allo/Duo user ever want to join a server, or something analogous? They just want to call or message their friend. I think it's obvious to merge some of their consumer point to point apps, but criticizing their group chat solution because they have consumer point-to-point apps is wrong.

Do you never want to talk to more than one person? I don't see why talking to one person is one app but adding another person means we need to stop, hangup, open a new app and reconnect.

But Google doesn't segment their chat products based on target market, they segment it based on business unit. Google is just really unafraid of competing with Google in the marketplace, apparently.

Target market: enterprise

* Video-conferencing & meeting: Hangouts Meet

* Direct messaging & team communication: Hangouts Chat

Target market: consumer

* Video & audio calling: Duo

* Text messaging: Allo

You could even put it in a 2x2, doesn't get any more clear than this.

OK, so here is consumer case: weekly video call to parents, who live separately. Duo? 1-on-1. Hangouts Meet? enterprise. Original Hangouts? Who knows how long it will be here, but hey, Google Voice suddenly got updated after 5 years of neglect. Doesn't get any more clear than this.

I'm not saying that they cover every use-case, just that now they have a very clear targeting.

If they don't support your use-case, use someone else's product.

but is this use case seems that exotic to you?

it's not a 'consumer' target then, but a '1-on-1' use case => segmenting by use cases

I think it is an uncommon use case, but I wouldn't say exotic. On the other hand, which of the latest services support it? WhatsApp doesn't, FaceTime doesn't (although they're rumored to soon). So I'd guess it isn't common enough to be launched in the initial versions.

On your second point, yes, you're segmenting by use case, I was segmenting by target customer.

no, how does supporting only one video call use case by app mean target is consumer and not that use case?

It isn't "supporting only one video" that mean the target is consumer. Allo & Duo have no enterprise features, and are publicly marketed to consumers. Hangouts is marketed & sold as part of GSuite, the enterprise productivity suite from Google.

Targeting determines features, not the other way around.

> Hangouts is marketed & sold as part of GSuite, the enterprise productivity suite from Google.

And is embedded inside consumer Gmail, and included by default on every Android phone I've seen since it replaced Google Talk or GChat or whatever it replaced. It's the default SMS app on a lot of Android devices. What's enterprise about it?

> and included by default on every Android phone I've seen since it replaced Google Talk or GChat or whatever it replaced.

Hangouts has since been replaced by Messages as Google's primary Android SMS app, and by Allo as its primary Android internet-based text chat app, and by Duo as its primary Android video-call app.

Except that neither Messenger or Allo are embedded in Inbox or Gmail. It's Hangouts all the way there. I actually like Messenger, but it's lacking certain features so I always end up back on Hangouts. Plus, Messenger doesn't give me transcripts of voicemails. So "integrated" is pushing it. It's there, it's nice, but it's not everywhere and as useful as Hangouts is.

Well that clears everything up nicely! ;-)

Which means 'consumer' have no idea what app to use and when (and also learning that you better not to get used to any of them)

Hangouts being marketed primarily as part of GSuite and not as a consumer app is a recent pivot.

target here is not a consumer, target here is particular feature. you fragmenting your target 'consumer' by video and text chats, each served by separate app. how is it not a use-case/feature segmenting? feel free not to answer though

Nope, the target is the customer (consumer & enterprise), and then you build the features required by that customer.

You don't build a video calling tool and then look for a potential segment to sell it to, you define/find a segment and then build the product with the features required to target that segment.

It's clear, all right, but I don't want FOUR apps to do what one should.

And none of the supporting arguments for this change have been persuasive to me. This is just x4 fragmentation, if you ask me.

This is spot on. TONS of people are using Slack in their personal lives because it's a good chat app. It doesn't matter if it was originally built to support business teams.

Yep! I use Slack with friends, family, and work. Great app, and I like that it's all right there.

> Please make one amazing chat app. Just one. Merge Allo, Duo, Chat, Hangouts, Meet, Messenger, Voice, and your RCS platform into one extensible platform with third party integrations.

all of us who heavily invested in Wave are laughing so hard we are coughing up blood.

Slack has guests support

Oh yay, more chat apps from Google. I had finally hit a nice point of integration: using Hangouts with Project Fi means I got somewhat close to the iMessage experience (at least as far as being able to send/receive SMS from my computer). Clearly the integration wasn't great, and the Hangouts app is badly in need of work, but it's a shame to see that even that limited functionality is going away in favor of more fragmentation.

I saw the headline and honestly thought it was a satire piece.

This comes to mind: http://www.bonkersworld.net/confusement/

Can you elaborate on Hangouts + Project Fi? I'm also on Fi, and want the iMessage type experience, but always seem to fall short of it. Is there something particular about the Hangouts and Fi combo?

Set Hangouts as your default text message app on your phone, text messages and voicemail transcriptions then get sent to Hangouts and you can see them on the computer as well as the phone. You can also send text messages from the computer.

I never used iMessage so I don't know how it compares, but this has always worked well for me.

I'm not sure if the option is in the Fi app or the Hangouts app, but I allowed Hangouts to manage my SMS on the phone. It behaves as my Google Voice number did before: SMS (as hoped) and phone calls (not so useful in practice) pop up in Gmail as well as on the phone.

This is what I do, and it's reasonable. Annoyingly, I sometimes miss calls as my computer will start ringing 10+ seconds before my phone, so by the time I grab my phone, the incoming call has already been sent to voicemail.

I use PushBullet to send SMS from my computer. It get's the job done. https://www.pushbullet.com/

Join[1] is a nice alternative to PushBullet. Does most of what PushBullet does [including sending SMS from your computer] but costs a one-time fee of £4,99, instead of PushBullet's monthly subscription.

[1] https://joaoapps.com/join/

I wouldn't trust a one time fee app to be properly maintained though.

Awesome! I'm glad you said something because that looks great.

i think airdroid is free or one time as well.

https://www.airdroid.com/

The new Google Voice app is a relatively good experience, unified across web/mobile platforms.

Except somehow they managed to completely hide the "make a phone call" button on the web - which is pretty much the most important use case. So, first thing I do is go to the "legacy Google Voice" menu item; it re-loads the page and there's my old friend...

You can't make a phone call from the app either afaict. You still use Hangouts Dialer.

Except Google Fi, where you can't use Google Voice. FFS Google.

Is there a way to route hangout messages to Google Voice?

Does it work well with project fi accounts?

You cannot use it with Fi at all

I was starting to wonder if they were even going to launch a new messaging product this week.

Their messaging strategy was lumbering worryingly towards being comprehensible. I'm glad they corrected that.

I thought these types of comments weren't allowed on Hacker News? I'm curious why a mod hasn't detached this comment yet.

Google Cloud Next '17... introducing products that will go live in '18 and be shuttered in '20.

Our company is evaluating team collaboration products right now. I told them not to even look at hangouts because you couldn't trust Google to keep a product alive. This was two days ago...

If you are still looking at this, we use the following solutions at work:

- https://meet.jit.si as a hangout replacement (seems like a polished hangout alternative)

- https://about.mattermost.com/ as a on-premise slack / hipchat / irc alternative

(not affiliated with any of those products)

As long as https://appear.in is independent, I don't care what Google does with Hangouts. Appear.in doesn't even require a login!

But remember that most of the better team collaboration tools are paid and Hangouts is free and works good.

Is disrupting a large team when google inevitably change their minds worth "free" ?

This is a team/job culture question (but I can understand both sides). For some large teams this is a non brainer and some other teams in other companies will get near heart attacks when this happens ;)

Yes Google's chat strategy is a mess, but this part is great news:

> It’s a full rewrite of the Hangouts meeting experience and will work without any plug-ins (and Google also promises that it will be lighter on the processor, too, and won’t eat into your battery life or make your laptop’s fans spin at full speed). The team also cut down on the code size and promises that meetings will load “instantly.”

Our team spans macOS, Windows, and Linux and each one of us has our own unique bugs with Hangouts ranging from robotic voices to not being able to join existing Hangouts. In short it's a giant mess. I'm glad to see they're starting from scratch, hopefully this time around will be more reliable.

Of course their "rewrite" and fix currently means that it only works on Chrome and not other browsers.

If it works properly, then it's no worse than having to install any other specific app like slack.

This! And I hope that they fix the "calling now" issue. I still don't get why they did not make a small desktop app and voice only calling to destroy Skype. So much potential wasted.

They clearly think desktop apps are obsolete.

From the comments here you would think there is a negativity competition. Chat and Meet are sorely needed, and make GSuite a viable replacement for heterogenous services: HipChat, Slack, GTM, Zoom, Uberconference, etc. Some organizations have all of these deployed simultaneously, along with GSuite, this is a huge win for easier management and lower cost. You can complain about fragmentation of their chat strategy all day long, but most of the apps mentioned here are designed for consumers, not businesses.

Is Google's strategy to enumerate all possible messaging / social applications ? Then either stop development on them or shut them down when they don't have more than 1 million people using them within 6 months?

> Your browser doesn't support Hangouts Meet

> To join this meeting, install the latest version of Google Chrome.

I guess no more meetings for me then...

Lucky ducky.

I gave up on most Google instant messaging some years ago when the stories appeared about how enabling Hangouts was somewhat of a one-way process, with many people complaining about their existing functionality being hosed in one or another fashion. (E.g. Hangouts wants to take over SMS responsibilities, but borks them.)

Google Voice languished, with message forwarding sometimes taking many minutes or even a few hours. Then this year, a new Voice push of some sort was announced, and now message forwarding is mostly back to nearly instantaneous.

One fucking product, Google. That works. Fine, add new functionality to it, but don't make me keep chasing down and and installing new apps, wondering whether and how this integrates with what I already have and what is going to get hosed. (By the way, do you guys ever try to use your public help pages, yourself? Hahaha...)

So, that little sidebar in Gmail? I'll still use that, when it happens to work and to be convenient. I recently used Hangouts -- setting up an entire account under my domain for the other party -- in a case where Skype had proved to be crap in terms of quality and holding the connection (what they typically use, and what I've refused to use since moving to a new machine).

That's about it, for my current Google IM-ish experience.

Gmail, I use. Calendar, I use. Docs, I use. They change -- I can keep up with this.

Pick a name, and a front door, and leave that the fuck alone. Your schizophrenic branding -- and sometimes dueling functionality -- is not doing you any good, here.

Cheers.

Slack is very important to a lot of companies and groups. We use it not only as an IRC replacement, but also to hook into our CI and git repos. Along with the wealth of information and tools already put in there, there is the mindset that Slack is our communication tool we can rely on.

Google does not have a good track record when it comes to supporting their products. Look at Picasa, Google Glass, Bump, Currents, and sadly, Google Reader.

Google is good at advertising, email, and search. But I would not put any investment of time or data into their other products if I knew I needed them in the future.

My thought exactly. How long could I use this for, before it was ripped away from me? How much would I invest into this, only to get told I have two months to migrate?

Sorry Google, your search is great, your email services easy to use, but everything from your Apps for business panel through to your plethora of half-baked products are messy and inaccessible.

I'm no fan of slack but I don't see this as being competitive.

Google hangouts (which I use for sms, among other things) has a very poor search feature. Slack on the other hand has decent search capabilities. Plus, slack-bots are well integrated already. It does not avoid my largest criticism of slack: the inability to save conversation history locally.

This sounds like a late to market slack-clone. What is innovative about this offering?

Hangouts Chat does indeed have powerful search functionality built-in, as shown in the demo.

Screenshot from TC: https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/664cd61...

>Google hangouts (which I use for sms, among other things) has a very poor search feature.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks that a search function seems absolutely basic for a messaging app.

What search function? Do you mean going to gmail.com and searching "in:chat blah"? Even that is terrible.

To make the UX even more annoying, chats are grouped under a special label that's invisible to the gmail app on Android.

Oh good we've gone full circle, back to Google Chat.

I feel like this isn't even the first time we've gone full circle on Google's messaging products.

I think gchat always worked at least inside gmail.

That transitioned over to Hangouts in 2013, and the final GChat app (Windows) stopped working 2 years ago.

Despite Google's confused messaging strategy, I am actually okay with this. This is the clearest indication I've seen of a clear, targetted approach from them on the messaging front.

Hangouts was/is amazing for conf calls, so they took that, made it simpler and called it Meet. Hangouts was less awesome for chat, but a lot of people are using it and Slack, so they took the good things from Slack, revamped the chat experience and called it Chat.

Their intro explainer has quotes from people in large corporations saying how good it is and scenarios of these products being used for "work things."

I like this and hope that it rises in prominence.

I hope this means that various usability and performance issues with Hangouts I've had improves.

That said, I'm having trouble not laughing out loud at this whole thing. It legitimately feels to me like they have no clue what they're doing and are spinning their wheels so that they have wheels to spin.

Google still didn't fix the damage they did by abandoning XMPP, and not supporting server to server encryption in Google Talk.

SNAP has a market cap of 29 billion USD, and does not support XMPP.

> SNAP has a market cap of 29 billion USD, and does not support XMPP.

Berkshire Hathaway has a market cap of over 400B. They also don't support XMPP. I think we're definitely seeing a trend here...

I'm not using Snap either.

So now they have:

* Gmail

* Google Talk

* Google Voice

* Allo

* Duo

* Hangouts Chat

* Hangouts Meet

Am I missing any products that compete with their own other products?

I sometimes wonder how Google's Product/PM team views their products and how they think having a reputation among techies for a very fragmented software base and focus helps them.

I get the idea of internally challenging yourselves to come up with replacements for your products but at least have some clear focus. Why are there so many different ways for me to connect with people when using Google's platform?

The beauty of iMessage at least in the mobile space is that it's your single app for text communications and Facetime for video. That's it. Bonus if you have a Mac since you can use it from your computer as well.

Messanger which got renamed to Android Messages a few weeks ago

That's just the SMS app.

Hangouts, Voice, and Allo are all meant to be SMS replacements — so they are directly competing with their SMS app.

Their newer approach of different products targeted at consumer vs. business use cases has some merrit. All/Duo for consumer, Hangouts Chat/Meet for business. The needs are different and one size fits all often means one size ideal for nobody.

And not one of them respects your privacy

It's almost like Google is the new Microsoft according to a certain famous parody of corporate hierarchies.

Google+ Communities overlap with group chat in some ways.

Inbox by Gmail

I mean Inbox is just an alternative Gmail client, so its not like you can't communicate between Gmail and inbox. This is not the case for e.g. hangouts and allo

I am done with Google! Except for Gmail, which I can't flee, everything else has been a disaster! A disappointment after a disappointment! Apparently, they focus way too much on hiring engineers with their notorious interview process and not on hiring people who can design and deliver sane and practical products! If they weren't a monopolist in search for too long, they'd be long gone!

Let's wait for the next iteration where they put Duo, Allo, Chat and Meet into one product named "Hangout Next".

But I'm happy they do not forget the enterprise... using hangouts nearly every day with slack and /hangout . Still the best quality when you have a global team and sometimes flacky internet or below 300 Kbit/s bandwidth.

The unclear thing here is: what is going to happen to hangouts on personal accounts? I use google hangouts on my gmail account for group hangouts all the time (role-playing game group that's geographically distributed, for example). I mean, I'll use hangouts meet or whatever instead of vidchat hangouts, but only if it exists.

I agree, since I engage in a bit of this myself, though admittedly the largest such chat got moved over to Slack a while ago due to the (at the time) lack of any easy way to remove someone from a group hangout.

Why do Google keep rebranding their chat attempts? Why don't they iteratively improve what they have?

Most tech companies are like nation states, ruled from above by a single strong leader (Apple under Jobs being the best example). I've become to understand Google is much more like Germany in the mid-19th century - a collection of competing principalities with a common language but a weak and ineffective government coordinating their efforts. I remember being told on the first day of orientation that Google was not a meritocracy, but a feudal society. I think all of our more puzzling product evolutions make much more sense in that light.

Poor organization structure, I'd guess

More than likely Google Meet is trying to take market segment away from Slack with the major advantage of offering video meetings.

I can't imagine it will be free. Not that I suggest it should be.

edit: Nope. https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html

I'm more concerned that they would abruptly drop it in a couple of years.

Meet Google's suite of messaging apps: Alphabet.

You can only communicate using the letter matching the app you're using.

There is a small but vibrant community that uses hangouts video conferencing to play tabletop roleplaying games, with the added bonus of having sessions automatically saved to youtube. There are also people with unmonetized youtube channels that consist of videopodcasts: hangouts video conferences between several people talking about whatever.

For these use cases restricting Hangouts Meet to gsuite customers means Hangouts is dead for them. I guess most people will switch to videoconferencing with Skype+OBS and streaming live to Twitch. It will work but it's harder to set up for non technical people.

Of course google does not owe me nothing and they can do as they like with their (until now) free product. But it's a pity that these common use cases that were possible with Hangouts are going to be discontinued.

I think this may attract customer who have existing Gapps suit in their organization.

Advantage slack has is integration with different things and you can use any email address to sign up.

if Chat and meet required to sign in with only Gmail then people may not want to get locked in

The cynic in me notices that this comes at the same time as Perf season in Google.

It's such a bad running joke internally that we have a never-ending multiplication of chat apps that I had to check the calendar to see if today was suddenly April.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-has-a-messaging-app-prob...

The problem with google chat services is... will they last more than 6 months? Considering how many changes Hangouts went through, do I even want to waste time on evaluate its current incarnation?

I can't help but wonder if the comments defending Google's strategy are from paid folks (shills, I suppose). The vast majority of comments are hating on the strategy and then there's a few who are lambasting everyone else and claiming that wanting a single chat app out of Google is paramount to "wanting an app which does everything." Perhaps their Google employees? This is high stakes so I'd expect some attempt to control the damage (I.e., "shape" the conversation).

...neither of which has any support for third-party clients, still.

Honestly, it seems that sometimes Google lives on another planet, and have no idea what their customers want. Here's what all google customer want... they want to see their apps improved and updated, and NOT replaced by more apps.

Maybe their plan is... if we make Hangouts worse, than we can make them use Allo and Duo. I know 0 people using those two apps. Even people with Pixel phones are not using it.

Wow, Google playing catch up to Microsoft who's playing catch up to Slack.

I hope they'll fuse chat, message and allo, this is getting ridiculous

Good grief Google, make up your mind. It's like some sad corporate race condition. Google keeps optimizing things but has no guiding vision. I might as well be watching cats in a diamond mine.

Guess which will die first?

Allo

Duo

Chat

Meet

Voice

Did I miss any?

Messenger...I mean Android Messages

Hangouts, Talk.

Doesn't Google+ have its' own chat system?

I'll never for Meebo. It just worked, and Google shut it down.

I don't think I will move any substantial business communication to Google Chat. I'm happy there is competition but Slack nailed it and now google is playing catchup.

I don't think Slack really nailed it any better than Google hangouts, other than it's IRC like interface that differentiates it. It's chock full of it's own horrible bugs and problems. I can't even have it open for more than a few hours before it slows my system to a complete halt.

Why does the ghost of Wave keep haunting Mountain View?

FINALLY! What we were all waiting and hoping for: another chat app from the same company.

More wood behind fewer arrows

Hope the quality of Video Chat is as good as Apple's FaceTime.

> Running 30-person video conferences

Zoom provides 50-person.

Does it work with Gmail chat?

Pah!

No delete or edit?

Useless.

Oh for fuck's sake.

Which is basically what I end up thinking after virtually every Google announcement regarding chat.

We can profitably do without more drive-by snark (which we've asked you repeatedly not to post) on Hacker News.

Honestly, I think this is exactly the sort of sentiment we need on Hacker News, because I think it accurately and succinctly represents the opinion of a significant portion of the community with respect to Google's chat apps.

Sometimes snark is the only decent response to a situation; I think that Google's chat quagmire is arguably one of those.

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