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Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

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Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#101

Post by insane_dreamer »

stevewillows wrote: post #59

gchat was great. I really wish Google build on Hangouts to integrate SMS like iMessage. Having a proper desktop SMS client is the only reason I ended up going back to IOS a few months ago. I can understand why they dropped XMPP. I'm not sure if they really violated their 'don't be evil' motto as much as they recognized that other services were improving on their dime. I like Slack for corporate environments, but IRC…

I think Slack works best for closed project workgroups, whereas IRC is best for open and persistent communities.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#102

Post by andrewvijay »

I got my first girl friend, mini project approval in college and many more from that gtalk. I was devastated to know it was discontinued. They could have just named hangouts as gtalk and released it. Which would have been a good effort. Companies work so hard to create brand value in their products but Google unintentionally creates value and destroys them later on. Phew.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#103

Post by prutschman »

tizzdogg wrote: post #50
pkaeding wrote: post #17

> And there are even still some holdout users on old-style Gchat. I'm not sure if I'm one of those holdouts? I've been using gchat, mostly over XMPP (using adium), and sometimes in Gmail. I frequently search chat history in Gmail. I didn't realize that gchat had such a tumultuous history.

Yeah I still use it daily, and now I'm worried it's going away. I wonder how many holdouts there are out there?

I rely extensively on Gchat via Adium.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#104

Post by LeoPanthera »

sparkie wrote: post #99
LoSboccacc wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had jabber for a decade at least. The battle for messaging market share doesn't seem technological. Heck you even had the option to federate private servers so one could address users across hosts.

But Jabber was XML based. Matrix is JSON Based! If only we would've chosen the right technology, people would've used it. https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0295.html

edit: it's a joke. I'm an idiot.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#105

Post by fucking_tragedy »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #104
sparkie wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Jabber was XML based. Matrix is JSON Based! If only we would've chosen the right technology, people would've used it. https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0295.html

edit: it's a joke. I'm an idiot.

If you believe that's the point the OP was making, you did not click the link in the post you're replying to.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#106

Post by stormbrew »

stormbrew wrote: post #8
kinkdr wrote: post #3

ICQ actually predates AIM

It doesn't say it didn't (that I can see). I think it's saying AIM brought the concept into the mainstream, and I think that's probably more or less true in the US. Interestingly (to me, at least), this seemed to be pretty reasonable. No one I knew in Canada had AIM, except if they talked to Americans regularly. MSNM was very very popular, though. And ICQ before it.

Reasonable should be regional. Noticed after the edit window, damnit.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#107

Post by LeoPanthera »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #105
LeoPanthera wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit: it's a joke. I'm an idiot.

If you believe that's the point the OP was making, you did not click the link in the post you're replying to.

Edit: still an idiot.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#108

Post by gaius »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #85
mmastrac wrote: post #6

We had a clean, functional chat app in Gchat that supported XMPP federation, a reasonably good file transfer protocol (IIRC it could be implemented by others) and a even emoji. When Google dropped XMPP, it was pretty much the death knell for interoperability. Facebook followed suit. I don't get the politics that drives the internal chat product development, but it feels like there's a lot of NIH-related "burn it to t…

What Google failed to realize is that people want chat that's connected to other services they frequently use. I'm already browsing FB so it's easy to chat with my FB friends using Messenger rather than both pop over to another service. The same reason why MSFT has tried (much less successfully) to incorporate its chat offerings into Office365 and the reason it bought Skype. Google was in a position to capture the ch…

Back in the day, it was normal for everyone to have some sort of multi-protocol chat client like Trillian or Adium or Pidgin, and everyone had multiple accounts too, MSN, ICQ, AIM etc some people even had Yahoo. You wouldn't care which one one of your contacts was online with, you could just chat. The "stickiness" of an individual chat system was very, very low, and the network effects didn't work like any of those companies expected them to.

You see it today with drivers having both Uber and Lyft apps open.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#109

Post by fucking_tragedy »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #107
fucking_tragedy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that's the point the OP was making, you did not click the link in the post you're replying to.

Edit: still an idiot.

Please read, comprehend and then post. From the page you didn't read that was linked in the OP:

> NOTICE: This document is Humorous. It MAY provide amusement but SHOULD NOT be taken seriously.

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