Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1oooqooq | Hacker News Reader

google didn't split from hangouts. It got merged into hangouts (and both apps existed) because some PM bonus was tied to hangout active users or something. Same reason you automatically logged into a gmail-plugin-hangouts client when you opened gmail by default.

They just undid that shenanigans after the PM got his bonus. Maybe by then their bonus was tied to simplifying the tech stack :)

edit:

> If privacy/secrecy via obfuscation is your #1 criteria

lol, no. the only usecase for gvoice and the likes is to have a fixed phone number without a montly bill that you can use to make international phone calls for business. or to receive calls when abroad.

Nobody who cares about privacy etc (or any quality of network protocol for that matter) would care about gsm and sms. at all. it's mostly for cheap convenience.

View on HN

(Bracing for the downvotes) As an end user, looks like the bonuses resulted in a pretty good UX.

I love having Mail, Meet, Voice, and Chat in a single web app. (The Gmail app now also has Meet and Chat all-in-one, but Voice has its own app)

I can definitely see how merging the services would boost MAU/DAU, but in this case it seems like increasing DAU means you’re making it easier for users to access + use the service, which is a win win.

Argue it split or merged til the cows come home, that PM bonus should have been 10x as much recurring if that's what caused it to be. Hangouts was years ahead of its time in functionality to the user - I could SMS/MMS, call, IM and video/voice chat all from the same interface on web or app on any of my devices without a dependency on any of them. If the offering were still available today I'd go back in a heartbeat - it was glorious.

> lol, no. the only usecase for gvoice and the likes is to have a fixed phone number without a montly bill that you can use to make international phone calls for business. or to receive calls when abroad.

Please ignore assuming meaning of a term so you can laugh at me in response. It was actually quite handy to pass out VOIP numbers for interviews, sign up forms, and the like because they could never tie back to reaching me once I stopped the forwarding. I realize that is different than worrying about government actors tracking you via standard telephony but you should realize there is more than that specific interpretation of the term, especially when GP named the same use case I just mentioned.

I've been a user since grand central and held on to my same number since. At a time when carriers were still competitive, it was great for switching to whatever company were offering the best incentives and not having to worry about telling everyone your new number. Porting numbers sort of resolved this, but I still don't have to worry about it since I only use my GV number.

GV provided online text messages and voice mail before everyone else. GV also allows you to add multiple lines to the same number. At one point I lost my phone and was still able to receive and make calls from the web and my SO's phone.

Its used for a lot more

Reply on news.ycombinator.com