- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
tl;dr: after pushing rcs so hard for years, killing hangouts well after forgetting about it, & hiding it from gmail, google now wants you to use its (and google allo’s) successor, google chat.
google’s messaging strategy has gotten so bad that they now have to remind consumers which of the apps are made for them. i myself had no clue that the google chat app in the play store was targeted towards consumers, i just assumed that the app was google workspaces only considering they always push rcs & that the play store description doesn’t go two sentences without talking about enterprise & google workspaces.
it’s kinda wild when you consider that they had a 17 year headstart on this & still somehow lost the messaging app/site race multiple times
- Sooperstition ( @Sooperstition@lemmy.one ) English46•1 year ago
How long until they close down the Google Chat app and move to something else that is barely different?
- conditional_soup ( @conditional_soup@lemm.ee ) English37•1 year ago
This is Google’s biggest problem, I think. They’re so flaky on their products and services, I find myself not wanting to bother trying things out in case they don’t become popular enough for Google to maintain. I saw a lot of the same remarks about Stadia, and though I seem to remember Google assuring Stadia was playing the long game, well, we see how that played out.
- zurohki ( @zurohki@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English11•1 year ago
Stadia really needed to be a monthly subscription model rather than asking people to buy games on Stadia.
Nobody wanted to buy in to a Google platform, but I might’ve signed up for a month and had a look.
probably about a week, give or take
- Unsaved5831 ( @Unsaved5831@lemm.ee ) English15•1 year ago
I enjoyed using Hangouts. I still do. But the plethora of communication apps Google makes always give me chills that the judgement day is just round the corner. And by the time it arrives, it will just end up as another name on the list without much resort.
same, back ~2015-2018 i was hangouts’ biggest fan. now i avoid most google platforms in general aside from gmail, android & youtube. i can’t trust anything else to stay around anymore, & even when they do keep an app alive they end up just endlessly shuffling them around like this for no reason
- yamasaur ( @yamasaur@yamasaur.com ) English2•1 year ago
I feel the same way used to love hangouts, tried allo. But at this point I don’t even use rcs because although it’s “open” no third party developers can make apps for it. Using matrix with bridges via beeper is how I integrate all my chats now and makes life way easier
- Toribor ( @Toribor@corndog.uk ) English2•1 year ago
Using Google apps used to be a smooth and seamless experience but it’s become a slog. The best you can hope for is that they’ll just stop supporting whatever service you like and just let it rot without updates for years while you are allowed to keep using it. Otherwise they’ll just force you to migrate around constantly while merging or fragmenting the experience until the former happens anyway.
It’s exhausting and it’s utterly destroyed my desire to check out anything new in their ecosystem.
- qjkxbmwvz ( @qjkxbmwvz@lemmy.sdf.org ) English1•1 year ago
I was an early Fi subscriber, and Hangouts was awesome in the beginning as it would handle GTalk and SMS seamlessly.
Signal is my new friend.
- Toribor ( @Toribor@corndog.uk ) English2•1 year ago
It’s pretty hilarious how badly they’ve fucked this up. I have no interest in Google Chat at all because it’s almost certain they’ll replace it with yet another service before I even have a chance to settle in.
- falsem ( @falsem@kbin.social ) 0•1 year ago
I mean, the page you linked even says:
What’s new
Current version, for Google Workspace Customers only, includes direct messages, group chats, and platform integration with Google AppsSo I don’t know what to think.
- zacharoid ( @zacharoid@kbin.social ) 0•1 year ago
Maybe they should update their description:
About this app
Collaborate seamlessly with Google Chat, part of Google Workspace
Google Chat is an intelligent and secure communication and collaboration tool, built for teams. From ad-hoc messaging to topic-based workstream collaboration, Chat makes it easy to get work done where the conversation is happening.
• Group collaboration that allows Google Workspace content creation and sharing (Docs, Sheets, Slides), without having to worry about granting permissions • Side by side editors, one click meetings, scheduling, document creation, and shared files, tasks, and events
make it easy to get work done
• Google search functionality, with options to filter for
conversations and content that you’ve shared • Ready for Enterprise, with the full benefits of Google Workspace security and access controls including Data Loss Prevention, Compliance, Admin Settings, Vault Retention, Holds, Search, and Export
- blivet ( @blivet@kbin.social ) 1•1 year ago
Whatever they think they are doing is absolutely incomprehensible. We use Google workspace where I work and a year or two ago Google was actively trying to kill the Chat app as a separate item and merge it into Gmail. I have no idea whether the Chat they’re pushing now is the same thing they were trying to get rid of not too long ago, or a new thing with the same name.
- encode8062 ( @encode8062@lemmy.one ) English50•1 year ago
Please use Signal. It is a great alternative!
- Racle ( @Racle@sopuli.xyz ) English8•1 year ago
Signal is great. But it’s so hard to convince anyone in my family to use it as almost everyone here (in Finland) uses whatsapp to communicate.
But I have few groups in signal with my IT-related friends.
- flashgnash ( @flashgnash@lemm.ee ) English5•1 year ago
Surprisingly it’s been really easy to get people on signal, haven’t had to really try convincing people at all just explain what it is and they get it
- cy4n ( @cy4n@waveform.social ) English3•1 year ago
still can’t get my friends and family on it, have to use messenger which is quite the pain lol
- flashgnash ( @flashgnash@lemm.ee ) English1•1 year ago
Way I’ve always sold it is “it’s basically identical to WhatsApp except without Facebook spying on you” then I also show them the cool gradient feature for messages
- snowbell ( @snowbell@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
gradient feature?
- Stanislav N. aka pztrn ( @pztrn@bin.pztrn.online ) English5•1 year ago
- dxcz ( @dxcz@beehaw.org ) English5•1 year ago
Got my immediate family on it. Miss some features when forced elsewhere.
- BeigeAgenda ( @BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca ) English47•1 year ago
Killing hangouts just made me use other platforms and throw Google in the bin.
When they keep killing stuff I use, I get burnt.
- kiddblur ( @kiddblur@lemm.ee ) English6•1 year ago
Yeah, I hit a point around 2018 where I went from being a huge fan of Google’s to switching to iOS and trying to degoogle my life as much as possible (but also not wholly relying on one company for anything. I still have Google photos, but I also have local backups of all my photos, plus they’re in OneDrive and iCloud for example)
- BobKerman3999 ( @BobKerman3999@feddit.it ) English5•1 year ago
Yep, at this point I’m expecting that Gmail too is going to be discontinued without warning
- katy ✨ ( @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English13•1 year ago
Me, an Inbox by Gmail fan: first time?
- hamburglar26 ( @hamburglar26@wilbo.tech ) English3•1 year ago
Inbox dying was when I started to pull back from Google. What a great product and they just trashed it.
- 0ops ( @0ops@lemm.ee ) English1•1 year ago
I still haven’t found anything as good as inbox. I used Outlook for a few years, and spark for a couple more, but I just went back to Gmail a couple months ago
- Can-Utility ( @Can_Utility@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
laughs in Google Reader
- BeigeAgenda ( @BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca ) English3•1 year ago
Better start preparing…
- jherazob ( @jherazob@beehaw.org ) English2•1 year ago
Already on it
- katy ✨ ( @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English39•1 year ago
I used GTalk with the family.
Then you killed it.
- katy ✨ ( @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English56•1 year ago
(GTalk not the family)
- TheButtonJustSpins ( @TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub ) English6•1 year ago
phew
- radau ( @radau@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English5•1 year ago
I wasn’t concerned until you posted this second more ominous comment…
- GreyBeard ( @greybeard@lemmy.one ) English4•1 year ago
It’s too bad, you could have had a super hero origin story.
- Zagorath ( @Zagorath@aussie.zone ) English3•1 year ago
Well that was a relief!
- salarua ( @salarua@sopuli.xyz ) English2•1 year ago
thanks for clarifying
- catuprisingsociety ( @catuprisingsociety@lemm.ee ) English1•1 year ago
I was a little worried for a moment
- george ( @george@midwest.social ) English39•1 year ago
Google’s promotion-pack culture strikes again. You don’t get promoted at Google for “maintaining a successful product and keeping people happy.” You do get promoted for launching a new product, even if it competes with another well-liked Google product.
So if you want to be successful at Google, you launch a new chat service.
- Dr. DiddlyBadger ( @drdiddlybadger@vlemmy.net ) English8•1 year ago
Damn that is such a stupid way of doing things too. Eventually user goodwill depletes and you’re left with a significant investment in products that don’t even generate profit or good.
- Moonrise2473 ( @Moonrise2473@feddit.it ) English34•1 year ago
Huh? They confused 1st of July with 1st of April?
Another chat app???
They don’t get tired announcing and killing all of those chat apps???
Who’s going to bother inviting friends to chat in a platform that will be killed in one year max???
- animist ( @animist@lemmy.one ) English4•1 year ago
your poor question mark key does not deserve this kind of abuse
- TMoney ( @TMoney@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
I wish we could react to messages. hahaha
- Scrubbles ( @scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ) English3•1 year ago
All of my friend group was on hangouts. I don’t think Google realizes how monumentally stupid it was to kill off hangouts. Discord was really picking up in popularity and when hangouts died I moved the last of friend group to Discord.
Why in the fuck would I move them off discord back to Google?
- guero ( @guero@beehaw.org ) English3•1 year ago
does Google Chat supercede Hangouts or Allo? i honestly don’t remember what apps do what and which are alive or dead… Google, keeping us perpetually confused.
- NaturalBornHypocrite ( @NaturalBornHypocrite@beehaw.org ) English3•1 year ago
Each will be dead soon enough, so no point in considering any of them alive.
- greenskye ( @greenskye@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
It’s not really new? The killed/rebranded hangouts for this awhile ago. I gave up and moved to signal. Google chat is their corporate offering and feels awkward to use for personal life, at least to me.
- Storksforlegs ( @storksforlegs@beehaw.org ) English22•1 year ago
“We promise we wont kill this one!”
- Gork ( @Gork@beehaw.org ) English11•1 year ago
This trend is bad for the Google brand, and I’m surprised that the higher ups there don’t understand it. Why should I use a Google service and get attached to it if they are going to unexpectedly remove it entirely?
How long until Google Earth gets the axe? Or even Gmail? I’m writing this on my Google Pixel, but they could theoretically just say “naw we wanna leave the phone market” and then may not make the phone any longer or not provide OS or security updates if that is their prerogative.
For such a large tech company, they have the resources to run these services at cost in order to have their users be more valuable to them in the long term.
I’m still bitter about them completely dismantling the original Google Talk desktop application two decades ago (yes they weren’t shortened to app then lol) as it was the best communication platform of its time and had very clear voice comms.
- Chipthemonk ( @Chipthemonk@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) English5•1 year ago
I have a hard time trying new google stuff because it seems they kill it a few years later. Google used to be amazing, now I’m highly skeptical of the company. I’ve even switched to using Bing because google searches just result in a bunch of AI shit and other SEO bullshit.
- nobodyspecial ( @nobodyspecial@kbin.social ) 2•1 year ago
“We’ll just enshittify it over time until you all leave.”
- TMoney ( @TMoney@beehaw.org ) English2•1 year ago
I remember when their streaming service was launched and they said that. I don’t even think they lasted 2 years.
- jks ( @jks@feddit.nl ) English17•1 year ago
The article says
Just to recap: Google Talk (gchat) > Google Hangouts > Hangouts Chat > Google Chat
but of course that’s only part of the story. Here’s a longer recap from 2021.
- ‘Leigh 🏳️⚧️ ( @leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English17•1 year ago
…nope, can’t use it to chat with my friends and family, we all gave up on Teh Goog and I worked there for over a decade! 😆
(also, by the time you see this, they may have renamed it or introduced a competing messaging app. or both.)
- Gormadt ( @Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English6•1 year ago
And the new one they introduced will have fewer features than the old one with no plans to get it to feature parity.
- Limeade ( @Limeade@beehaw.org ) English1•1 year ago
Alternatively, they may make an amazing second chat app that is the smoothest you’ve ever seen and then they’ll shutter it and say “don’t worry, we rolled a couple of those features into Google Chat.”
- ptman ( @ptman@sopuli.xyz ) English16•1 year ago
Matrix
- TwistedTurtle ( @TwistedTurtle@monero.town ) English2•1 year ago
I used to use Google hangouts since it worked with Pidgin and other 3rd party apps. As soon as they nuked Hangouts I spun up a Matrix instance, got all my family on it, and haven’t looked back. It’s been excellent.
- cyd ( @cyd@vlemmy.net ) English15•1 year ago
Let’s all be grateful that Google handled GChat and its successors so incompetently. There was a window of time in which the world might have gotten hooked into using Google for instant messaging, which would have been a privacy disaster. Lucky, they fucked it up.
- eurostile ( @eurostile@fedia.io ) 1•1 year ago
Not sure that other platforms are that good regarding privacy as well though!
- BadlyHunt ( @BadlyHunt@lemmy.pwzle.com ) English13•1 year ago
It’s impossible to keep up with Google’s various services. Unless it’s Gmail or Photos, it’ll probably get killed within a year.
- Jajcus ( @Jajcus@kbin.social ) 3•1 year ago
Photos already took place of another application killed by Google. It can be killed again.
- bdonvr ( @bdonvr@thelemmy.club ) English12•1 year ago
I remember I actually used Allo, and Hangouts
Seriously google WTF
- Limeade ( @Limeade@beehaw.org ) English3•1 year ago
I don’t think I ever even heard of Allo until the news articles started coming out about Google killing it off. I used Hangouts briefly, but I didn’t know a lot of people who used it. I am surprised they are trying chat again.
- Lengsel ( @lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee ) English12•1 year ago
Why is it written with collectivist speak? "…reminds us…? Who is the “us”? The collectivist phrasing is disturbing as opposed to using objective terms.
- HeartyBeast ( @HeartyBeast@kbin.social ) 9•1 year ago
“Us” the audience. It’s just a turn of phrase that headline writers use - nothing deep
- StuccoTheBort ( @StuccoTheBort@kbin.social ) 6•1 year ago
And the website is specifically for followers of Google news.
- TheRoarer ( @TheRoarer@beehaw.org ) English9•1 year ago
I gave up once Wave was killed. It was the best of them.
- TMoney ( @TMoney@beehaw.org ) English2•1 year ago
Wave was so cool. haha