Comment by linhat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by linhat | Hacker News Reader

Sorry for the language, but WTF GOOGLE? Meebo has been around since forever (well, actually 2005) when it was only a web messenger and used by a LOT of people whenever you couldn't or wouldn't want to install a native messaging app, or messaging was blocked on your network. I actually know people that used Meebo exactly for that reason, no installation required and furthermore if you created yourself a Meebo account, you had all your different messaging protocols available and you had logs wherever/whenever you wanted/needed them.

It makes me really sad to see this piece of internet history (if one can call it that since it's not that old) getting axed, especially getting axed by a company this big which could surely afford to keep those servers running (maybe a meebo engineer could chime in on that since I have no idea what it takes to keep these running).

Surely meebo started changing its business angle quite a while ago but I don't think they would have cut the service that made them what they are today. That said, I really hope Google keeps its fingers of ANY service I enjoyed in the past.

+1. This is truly sad. One can only hope that the more Google kill, the more enterprenours will be unwilling to sell them their project (baby).

Let's not kid ourselves, browser based instant messaging across different protocols is not that interesting anymore. Facebook, What's App and iMessages won.

This will free up this capable team to work on something more current.

Let's not kid ourselves. Millions of people use instant messaging daily. Facebook in no way "won".

Poll: when's the last time you logged in to MSN/AOL/Yahoo Messenger?

I used Facebook for a brief period a year ago. Never touched FB chat. I stopped using Facebook and always found it tedious to sign in to both GTalk and AIM. Meebo solved a problem for me.

I would guess that technology caught up with them.

With the penetration of smartphones, I bet that that's become a better alternative than web IM for most people.

Exactly. Too focused on having a unified IM network for the desktop web. Facebook chat took over desktop web chat. Whatsapp took over mobile app chat. And Meebo got into toolbars and sharing widgets. Their lack of product focus and subsequent sale reminds me a lot of Loopt.

To me, Meebo was a lyric in "Here Comes Another Bubble", and not much else.

I'm not sure I'd consider it a notable piece of internet history. Google, yes; Netscape, yes; Napster, yes. LinkExchange, no; AllAdvantage, no; Meebo, probably not.

Honestly, there are better web messengers out there. Off the very top of my head, there's IM+ and eBuddy. Hell, even Trillian has a web version now.

None of them have the polish and stability of Meebo Messenger, I don't know what criteria for "better" they excel at.

There's also Google Talk in Gmail/Google+ ;)

Speaking of google, when the hell are they going to release a GChat app for iOS? The GMail web page on iOS doesn't have GChat, so I went searching for an app on the Apple App Store a while back and found one. I'm pretty sure it was just a UIWebView wrapper which sent a different user-agent to fetch the desktop version of GChat, and it wasn't long before it broke (I think google had changed the GChat URL).

it's just xmpp, just download an iOS XMPP client and you're all set. Same with FB chat.

You won't get push notifications without turning over your Gmail credentials to a third party. Google handles that for you for the official Android client. I only do it with application specific passwords and two factor authentication, but it's still an annoyance.

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