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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?

#21

Post by oldcynic »

Instant messaging used to be so simple. You connected via adium or pidgin, and it just worked. You could hook it up to gtalk and msn. Even ICQ and AIM. Then msn wouldn't play nice any more, then gtalk.

Now we've had a dozen renames and replacements, XMPP is long gone, and what's left is an almost unusable mess. Add to that the dozens of people I once had connected on Adium (from memory most on Google talk) are now strewn across loads of different chat apps.

These days I'm texting more again! This really isn't the future I expected.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#22

Post by b1daly »

It is remarkable how thoroughly Google has munged their communications platforms.

Especially as an iPhone user, I am constantly befuddled trying to get a semblance of a well organized contact list between my google apps, never mind a correspondence between the iPhone native contact list.

I have a google voice number, and generally I assume that messages get to me one way or another.

The most recent baffled was finally understanding that there is no way to manage contacts from within the iOS Hangouts app. I’m actually not sure how that contact list is generated.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#23

Post by andrepd »

>So you have to use the Google Hangouts on a separate tab in the browser, or it gets juxtaposed to your Gmail, which will slow your lastest i5 laptop down and makes your fan whirr like crazy just to have one conversation.

Fucks sake, this annoys me to no end. Here is a product that's clean, lean, and fast. 5 years of development later and you have a bloated, energy-chugging, slow and irritating piece of shit, with absolutely zero added functionally to show for it.

God damn it.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#24

Post by ndespres »

b1daly wrote: post #22

It is remarkable how thoroughly Google has munged their communications platforms. Especially as an iPhone user, I am constantly befuddled trying to get a semblance of a well organized contact list between my google apps, never mind a correspondence between the iPhone native contact list. I have a google voice number, and generally I assume that messages get to me one way or another. The most recent baffled was finall…

It isn't exactly clear how it's managed from the desktop either. Over the years they've really screwed the whole thing up. It's no longer clear whether someone is online, offline, online but hidden, or just lost in a contact list change reorganization. it also isn't clear whether someone is available to chat, or if the IM I send will be inconveniently received on their mobile phone, something I try to avoid doing when possible.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#25

Post by [deleted] »

aianus wrote: post #17
rident wrote: post #9

Google 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…

I use hangouts exclusively on Safari. It's actually frequently unusable with Chrome (nobody can hear me).

[deleted]

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#26

Post by rident »

aianus wrote: post #17
rident wrote: post #9

Google 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…

I use hangouts exclusively on Safari. It's actually frequently unusable with Chrome (nobody can hear me).

Meet though is exclusively Chrome. They have now cut Safari out of the picture as well... https://support.google.com/meet/answer/7317473

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#27

Post by CydeWeys »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #16
trothamel wrote: post #13

Instant messaging is an example of something that used to work, and now doesn't. It used to be that everyone was basically on AIM, which functioned as an open enough network. Status information worked pretty well - you could fairly easily tell if someone was online, and so people could respond. And now - we have dozens of clients, such that there's no way of knowing which subset your contacts use. With the prevalence…

I don't think that's accurate. There were a bunch of silos in the past, too. People used to be on AIM, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Jabber and IRC, and there were others. That's the reason chat apps like Adium and Trillian supporter multiple accounts. I had friends on all those networks, and nobody was on all of them. It was a mess back then, just as it is now, except now we have even more choices.

The difference was you'd fire up Pidgin and connect to all of those accounts simultaneously, at which point it really didn't matter which individual network any given contact was on.

Now, in the smartphone era, there's nothing like that. There's a bunch of different completely siloed apps, and I can't talk to people all from one place.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#28

Post by pilom »

One of the things I love about Google Fi is that I'm still allowed to effectively use Google Talk and SMS still works in Hangouts on my phone. I can do all messaging from the hangouts app with people over SMS or if they use hangouts, the message can go over that. I can text and call with my real phone number through the Gmail interface. Unfortunately, those with Google Fi are the only ones still allowed to use it that way.

Re: How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?

#30

Post by anigbrowl »

Great piece. I used to use GT a lot, then it changed to Hangouts and I used it less, then people were saying 'it's better to use Ello for encrypted chat' and I thought 'why bother'?

I've had this experience with quite a few Google products - they just keep getting larger and cheesier with no discernible user benefit. Everything just keeps getting bigger and worse, even search.

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