Why Google needs to build an open chat client like Elemen | Hacker News Reader

Why Google needs to build an open chat client like Elemen

ruky.me

16 pointsrukshn16 comments

Not Google, because if it becomes even mildly successful Google’s insatiable avarice will ruin it, and if it doesn’t become successful, Google’s insatiable avarice will ruin it.

So that they can kill it a few years later? I don't trust Google for anything new long term...

The potential upside to this would be that if gets shut down a snazzy instance could have an advantage in capturing a lot of the migrating users as the users could pick up where they left instead of starting over in a new service

Google Talk used to be XMPP based, and it was awesome.

Unfortunately someone managed to convince leadership that they needed to create a new chat app with a proprietary protocol, and everything went downhill since.

Google doesn't have to do anything. WE need to do something and stop relying on multinationals for so many things.

WE have a standard, that's XMPP, and it works perfectly. Nothing needs to be done. People just need to adapt. Or not.

We have them already. Xmpp/jabber, IRC, and even email.

Yes but how many people carry an irc client on their mobile phones?

I don't feel none of the chat protocols there are ported to mobile well enough, unless they use some modification to make them centralised.

Right, bc google is so trustworthy, and absolutely doesn't kill anything that doesn't service it's own specific goals.

I mean, to be fair, among all the various fields Google has ever entered, they have a comparatively good track record with chat applications, in particular: Google is, in fact, pretty much known for their keen understanding of how to maintain and grow social networking products (in general), and (of course) chat applications (in specific).

Is this sarcasm? They couldn't get Google+ anywhere even by gutting YouTube for it and they have like a dozen different chat apps where Noone knows the difference between them

(Do I really have to explicitly mark sarcasm these days? I went to great lengths to make my comment drip with flowery language like "among all the various fields Google has entered" on my way towards reaching a conclusion that would indicate Google is somehow better at chat than search, and yet I still got a response "is this sarcasm?" :/.)

One mistake I found there was never a Google Ello, it was Google Allo

Sorry typo there, I’ll fix that

Sounds to me like this doesn't correspond at all to google's main interests, being selling personal data from people and publicity, because first of all, how would they compete with whatsapp having more than 1 billion users in first place?

People are not loyal to any service

If there is a better service they will switch to it, and like I said google can target enterprise users with their own open chat service

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