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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?

#121

Post by yborg »

craftyguy wrote: post #66
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.

I'm amused that IRC is the only one of those you listed that is still alive and doing well.

It's alive, but I don't know about 'doing well'. It survives among some special interest communities, but the usage is tiny compared to any of the major platforms now. You won't find your uncle on it.

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

#122

Post by dvanduzer »

monksy wrote: post #81
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 really want Jabber to succeed, but it looks like all of the social providers don't want this and want to keep your communication on their servers. Also, I really don't understand the appeal of pushing 100s of these chat apps out. I.e. Slack, Discord, allo, whats app, etc. They're not compatable with each other. You have to have a 100 different clients installed. Many which their desktop version requires 2 cpus and…

Slack has the saving grace of optionally supporting an XMPP gateway, for those still committed to that dream. For now.

(I sincerely hope this comment isn't too prescient.)

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

#123

Post by dvanduzer »

thinkloop wrote: post #100
freeflight wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik ICQ is still somewhat popular in eastern Europe.

I don't actually remember why ICQ died, it was the best then there was MSN Messenger for some reason...?

AOL bought them. Slow burn.

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

#126

Post by dvanduzer »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #106
m_mueller wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect that nobody has figured out how to make money on it and that is what is 'going on'. It does make one ponder how to do this stuff in a sustainable way.

Seems like Slack figured out how to make a lot of money out of interoperable groupware. If they'd been slower at it, I'd still be saying they're an acquisition target for those companies.

edit: "All" they did was come along at the right time and make the interoperability easy. The prerequisites to have done it at all? Smartphones, WebRTC, and ElasticSearch.

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

#127

Post by bitL »

A typical process at a big corp:

Initial small enthusiastic team has a cool idea, works day and night, having a lot of fun on the project. They release it, it's cool, useful and everybody loves it. Then after a while original team members get bored or focus on other interests, move out of the team and new team members come in. Those team members aren't necessarily worse than the original ones, but have to maintain the project they didn't write. They need to show their usefulness, so they try to conjure new ideas that might not be useful at all, but hope they would be visible enough to grant them promotion within the company. They focus on some mistake/wart/non-refactored portion of code, make an essay or two to convince management that changes are needed, then slap on another feature they could be known for and proceed changing experience. Once they are done, management applauds them and customers either are lucky and have a blast with the new changes, or those changes were complete misses and started to ruin experience. This process repeats often until product is EOLed or just maintained for whatever reason.

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

#128

Post by tarjei »

eight_ender wrote: post #103

Our entire company ran on GTalk for a while, then Slack landed like the Spanish Flu and the IRC++ like features pushed every other medium out, except for some, email. Hangouts was used in meeting rooms for a while but it was so horrendously unreliable that we switched to GotoMeetings then Zoom. Zoom is less shit than the others but still fairly awful. Slack, imo, solved instant messaging in businesses completely, but…

Try https://appear.in it has worked wonders for us wrt to conferencing.

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

#129

Post by djhworld »

People on here bemoan the loss of XMPP integration and federated access to these platforms, but do Facebook/Google/Microsoft really give that much of a shit about that? I suspect the % of their userbase who wants, let alone understands those features is very small

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

#130

Post by abtinf »

skrebbel wrote: post #110
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…

> It used to be that everyone was basically on AIM, Given that the A in AIM stands for America, I'd call that a pretty damn narrow definition of "everyone".

Pedantic nitpicking:

The A in AIM stands for AOL. The A in AOL stands for America.

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