Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

tnhh.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 382 posts

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

#51

Post by jimjimjim »

cbhl wrote: post #44
andrepd wrote: post #23

>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 ab…

The story of basically every native Windows app that got rewritten as a web app. It'll run in Chrome on Linux, but good luck writing a GTK+ or Qt app that will interface with the underlying protocol.

Yep, web apps are just plan bad, but i can understand why a startup might go that way to shorten time to market, but replacing a native app with a web app should be a shootable offense

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

#52

Post by eridius »

Larrikin wrote: post #48
eridius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, not even Firefox support? Hasn't Google heard of something called the open web?

Firefox was first to go. I'm sure they were ecstatic to have an excuse to end support when Firefox changed how their add-ons work.

Didn't they change it so it's much more similar to how Chrome extensions work? Shouldn't it in fact be easier now to have an extension work in both Chrome and Firefox? The Mozilla wiki page on WebExtensions even says "Much of the specifics of the new API are similar to the Blink extension API."

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

#53

Post by yeukhon »

CydeWeys wrote: post #27
lobster_johnson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah but I doubt most Windows users use Pidgin. What happened back then ICQ, MSN and AIM dominated at different time and geographically, even though they co-existed since the 90s. Now, not so much.

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

#54

Post by pasbesoin »

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…

When they started pushing Duo and whatever the other piece of the associated current Google chat/conference... duopoly, is. Supposedly with some move away from and/or deprecation of Hangouts, not to mention the explicit language and dates WRT killing Talk.

Well, fuck me. I can't be bothered to keep up with their changing product lineup, naming, marketing, whatever TF this is.

I just use non-Google stuff, now, for chat/video.

FB Messenger may be busy selling my soul, but at least it's still "Messenger" and actually fucking works. Which is why pretty much everyone has it installed and knows at least basically how to use it.

If I could just get my associates and friends to start using Signal or the like... (Of course, Signal could improve their UI a bit. NOT more fucking emojis, but instead making it very clear and easy to opt out of making it the default texting app (on Android). That is, not a big bar to opt in, with a little X within that bar to opt out. Tired of explaning that each time, to "normal" people, before they get back to me complaining that their texting doesn't look/work the same, any more.

P.S. As I recall now, that other piece is Allo.

If I even understand things correctly. I couldn't bring myself to read up on this thoroughly; I kept feeling the desire to throttle somebody.

P.P.S. And I remember when, a few years ago, they REALLY wanted everybody to move to Hangouts. Including integrating their SMS activity. Only, this had significant bugs, including aspects of data loss and the irreversibility of changing to their set up. That they seemed to have little real momentum in fixing -- or even communicating clearly upon.

I guess I should actually read the OP. But I'm not sure my blood pressure can take it, now.

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

#55

Post by MRPockets »

vadimberman wrote: post #29

Continuing the train of thought of the comments bemoaning the state of the instant messaging: can anyone recommend a simple instant messaging / voice call combo like the old-timey Skype?

I use Wire[0] now. It offers IM, voice messages, voice & video calls, & a decent set of unobtrusive "silly" features (voice filters, ability to send drawings, etc).

Finding people is generally easy but for some reason, it will sometimes not find someone when you type the entire username but will find him/her before you finish typing the username out.

The best part is it works well on Android without GApps & seems to work much better than Skype in video calls on a slow connection.

0 - https://wire.com/en/download/

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

#56

Post by lallysingh »

bronson wrote: post #32
andrepd wrote: post #23

>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 ab…

But Google+. Do you not realize the value of Google+??

Nope. What is it? Honestly. I've never seen it. All they seemed to have was slightly cleaner sharing permissions UX.

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

#58

Post by m_mueller »

Spooky23 wrote: post #41
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’s not just Google. Have you tried Skype for Business lately? Meetings are incomprehensible. Teams is supposed to fix everything... but my O365 tenant doesn’t have it yet.

What the hell is going on with groupware? IBM, MS, Google, are they all just befuddled by whatever web fad is current to forget making their stuff actually useful? I feel like there has been nothing but regression since 10 years, ever since Skype brought free and stable group calls.

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

#59

Post by pasbesoin »

notwhereyouare wrote: post #47
inferiorhuman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Voice/Hangouts has felt like an abandoned application for many years, even though it's potentially one of the best products Google has ever made. That's probably WHY Google Voice was one of the best products Google put out.

it was originally a company called grandcentral and eventually acquired by google. they basically left it as it for YEARS

Exactly.

There's a reason users/clients have come to fear the Google acquisition of a product they've come to depend on and in which they've vested hopes of continued improvements and solutions.

At least Google hasn't outright put a bullet in Voice, yet.

Post reply on HN