How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
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Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
#2I used Pidgin once and it worked fine on Windows and Linux.
So instead of one universal client, one requires Skype, Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts/Allo/Duo. (I don't use iOS but Apple have their own, I guess)
Thus if anyone wants to contact me, stay old school and use SMS or email! :)
Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
#3I don't use Google Talk, so I don't know how accurate the article is.
But if it's at all true, it should become an HBS case study in how to destroy a community and how not to write software.
Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
#4For me, one of the worst parts of this transition is that as more people use hangouts, the experience becomes worse. The utter lack of control or signaling on it leads to tons of missed messages, threads that fall out of visibility, and general "did they see my message? do they even use this any more?" questions.
All of which Google Talk managed just fine. And if you wanted more control, install a third party app, because it worked with them all.
What did we gain for this?
Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
#5For me, one of the worst parts of this transition is that as more people use hangouts, the experience becomes worse . The utter lack of control or signaling on it leads to tons of missed messages, threads that fall out of visibility, and general "did they see my message? do they even use this any more?" questions. All of which Google Talk managed just fine. And if you wanted more control, install a third party app, b…
Not to mention you can't even delete messages on hangouts. One of the reasons I switched to telegram.
Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
#6My personal experience with Hangouts is that it would often hang and disconnect so that I would have to forcefully close the app. Then it wouldn't update the read receipts, or possibly worse, lie about who had seen what. I put all of this down to my having an old phone.
Recently, however, I got a new phone. I was excited to have a usable Hangouts once again, as that's where many of my close friends are. Unfortunately, now I know that the problem is Hangouts, not my phone.
Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
#7Hangouts also ha the worst video call quality of the bunch. It eats the battery extremely fast (vp9). There was a two year period where there was a feedback echo because the microphone wasn’t silenced, and then thrown to the side for a newer and less complete/just as buggy duo and allo. Let’s not forget the sms integration and then later deintegration.
Jabber days were good.
Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
#8I constantly have obvious spam accounts trying to send me Hangouts messages. That there isn't simply an option to never allow anyone not already in my contacts to message me is crazy.
Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
#9Google Talk was only ok when they had a jabber service. It wasn't much better than the other options besides that it tied delayed messaging (email) to instant messaging (jabber) through the same contact info.
Then they killed off the jabber client to force users further into their software ecosystem. Then Hangouts came along and has to some degree replaced Talk with further ties into that ecosystem.
Then they removed browser support for anything but Chrome in Hangouts, initially promising to re-extend support, yet today the docs have changed to just say you must install Chrome.
The most recent eco-system tie-in that this article doesn't mention is Google Hangouts Meet. The corporate conference room version of Hangouts that has a different interface, custom Google hardware, and less memorable links (/xcf-fges-sce vs. /organization/meeting-name).
Pixel has similar limitations when it comes to screen mirroring, only a Chromecast will do for the Pixel! Yet other android phones freely connect to Chromecast/Roku/Firestick/etc all because of a hidden menu setting that Google has disabled and set to 0 by default. You must root your phone to get around it. Great flagship right?
All this points to a company that's so fucking worried that their tech is going to be outpaced by the little guy that they have to resort to handcuffing users to their wares. I've almost completely switched to Slack in the mean time.
Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?
#10I transferred my American number to Google Voice before I left the country and have been able to hold onto that number for over a decade.
Unfortunately, everything about Google Voice/Hangouts/Talk/Whatever-it-is now sucks. Trying to find someone is damn near impossible. I totally can attest to that. The removal of federated and regular XMPP was the wrong direction.
I'm in the wonderfully weird situation of not having a Gmail account either. I deleted it and ran my own mail server back in 2012. I use DavDroid/Radicle for contacts, so in the web interface, any contacts after 2012 that are SMS are phone number only. I have to use my phone to see the names.
I don't think it's even possible to find someone via gmail address anymore. Occasionally I'd find someone on Google Plus .. and have no freakin idea how the hell to send them a personal message (either in G+ or Hangouts).
The whole Hangouts/G+/Gmail ecosystem is awful. If you don't have a gmail account, it's beyond unusable. I pretty much just use Hangouts for legacy chats.
AIM/Yahoo/MSN all worked .. and now they're all gone (I think Yahoo is still there, but web only). Facebook was unreliable as shit and god awful until around 2013/2014. It took them that long to create someone their competitors had done better a decade ago.