Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just installed the Telegram app. Why is it asking for my phone number?
They use phone number as account name rather than email on mobile.
What if I don't want to use it on a phone?
Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
241–250 of 295 posts
Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
#242We 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…
> When Google dropped XMPP AFAIK they only dropped federation and support, but I still can connect with any XMPP client.
They really just dropped support and left it a broken mess. It kinda looks like you can federate with them if you disable TLS, but messages are apparently just dropped. This is worse than if they just killed it, as people tend to blame XMPP instead of Google.
Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that WhatsApp is immensely popular in Germany. Most of my friends (me too) don't even have Facebook, and those who do, don't even use it regularly. WhatsApp on the other hand, is more trusted than Email - When some friend sends me an email, he asks me via WhatsApp if I revived it. Group Chats, especially with younger folks, are numerous and used for anything, even though the technology is obviously lacking, wh…
Sample size of one for me.... I was in Germany two weeks ago and I tried to get my colleagues on chat...any chat...when I mentioned WhatsApp, they all looked at me like I had a unicorn horn growing out of my forehead. So far I have been unsuccessful in getting any of my team on a chat platform on a regular basis. My company supposedly endorses Lync 2010 (yeah, I know), but probably less than 10% of my coworkers use i…
That's funny, because all people I know that use Whatsapp have moved to Germany.
But this mostly shows that the popularity debate is moot - you tend to know/use what your circle of friends does disregarding of statistics of this article posted.
Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
But interop doesn’t fix the issue of federation. If I want to chat with person X, I either have to use the same client as them, or I can’t do it. I can’t write my own, better client, either. That’s the big issue.
The big issue for you, perhaps - but the reality is that most users simply don't care about that.
Most users don't care because there is no way and they're not technically minded enough to complain about it. They would use it if available. I can cite many examples of non-technical users who had conversations like "do you have whatsapp", "do you have viber", "do you have X". From that it's safe to say there's a need for interoperability, and to be honest, if messengers get more important, some regulatory body will force it like they did with other things in the past.
Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
But interop doesn’t fix the issue of federation. If I want to chat with person X, I either have to use the same client as them, or I can’t do it. I can’t write my own, better client, either. That’s the big issue.
The big issue for you, perhaps - but the reality is that most users simply don't care about that.
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Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
#246Just about every week now there is a top story on HN about the disastrous state of interoperable messaging in the digital world. Every time it comes up, I implore people to look into Matrix ( https://matrix.org ), a system with an open specification that checks all the boxes in terms of features (not quite end-to-end encryption yet, but it's being worked on) and is not controlled by a company. I really hope to see it…
Haha! I just tried Vector on iOS and apparently moved about in such a way that I accidentally triggered the greatest notification message:
> You seem to be shaking the phone in frustration. Would you like to submit a bug report?
Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
The removal of XMPP interoperability was the moment I realised "Don't Be Evil" was just another marketing puff, and not actually a statement of values. But I think the termination of Google Wave (which was also federated and built with XMPP) was the real moment Google gave up on team communications.
Larry Page spelled it out in his Google I/O q&a. Google tried for years and years to get interoperability but Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo would never do anything more than 1-way interop sucking users out of xmpp into their proprietary system. Gchat didn't have many active users, meanwhile the closed systems were getting hundreds of millions of daily actives. I think mobile chat taught Google a lesson: the cultural…
Found the quote from Larry about XMPP: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9pmPa_KxsAM&t=2h54m20s
Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
They use phone number as account name rather than email on mobile.
What if I don't want to use it on a phone?
The web and desktop versions can send an SMS to authenticate if you don't want to or can't use the phone app.
Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
#249Just about every week now there is a top story on HN about the disastrous state of interoperable messaging in the digital world. Every time it comes up, I implore people to look into Matrix ( https://matrix.org ), a system with an open specification that checks all the boxes in terms of features (not quite end-to-end encryption yet, but it's being worked on) and is not controlled by a company. I really hope to see it…
Haha! I just tried Vector on iOS and apparently moved about in such a way that I accidentally triggered the greatest notification message: > You seem to be shaking the phone in frustration. Would you like to submit a bug report?
Wow. I am truly impressed.
Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
The removal of XMPP interoperability was the moment I realised "Don't Be Evil" was just another marketing puff, and not actually a statement of values. But I think the termination of Google Wave (which was also federated and built with XMPP) was the real moment Google gave up on team communications.
Personally,I had that moment when Google bought my favorite interoperable chat app so they could kill it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo
Yeah, this was the beginning of the end of my support for things done by Google.