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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?

#231

Post by rident »

pr3dr49 wrote: post #107
rident wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, Slack really is a beast isn't it? I do like the multiple network nature of it (even though everything is saved to Slack's servers) but I find it hard to believe it does so little for it's footprint. They too though made a Google-like transition and went from an open protocol (IRC/XMPP) to a closed/custom API. At least here, the server admin can enable those protocols if they want and the API seems to offer en…

You may explore Mattermost [1] if hosting on your own servers is a requirement. It is very easy to deploy and I found it very satisfactory, albeit testing with a relatively small team. I imagine scaling up would work. It ties in nicely with GitLab, which is another neat product for those who must not or wish not outsource information. [1] https://about.mattermost.com/

Matrix [1], mentioned elsewhere in these comments, looks interesting too and the Riot [2] app is similarly styled to Slack.

[1] https://matrix.org/

[2] https://riot.im/app/#/room/#matrix:matrix.org

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

#232

Post by rando444 »

snitko wrote: post #95
oldcynic wrote: post #21

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 st…

Have you tried Telegram? It's the best.

I enjoy telegram, but if I need to talk to more than the two people I know that use it... well..

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

#234

Post by cornholio »

tiagoespinha wrote: post #225
luka-birsa wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are others of course. You can go Telegram or Signal as a great cross platform chat. Not geared directly towards business, but still a great alternative. Chat apps are the posterchild of what happens when open standards (irc, jabber, xmpp,...) get replaced with walled gardens. On my phone I run: Telegram, Messenger, Viber, whatsapp, hangouts, signal, slack and SMS. I should have installed skype as well, but its…

> Chat apps are the posterchild of what happens when open standards (irc, jabber, xmpp,...) get replaced with walled gardens. To me it feels like the open standards never really kept up with the times, which in a way paved the way to walled gardens by the giants (and, in case of Slack, not so giants) to fill the gap which the open standards refused to fill. I mean, sure IRC is awesome, text-only, channels, but emojis…

> And then we have XMPP which doesn't support things like video or voice calling

The Jingle extension is about a decade old and it's what Google based its support on. They even played ball for a while and released a good quality open libjingle, then decided that fighting spam from the other open XMPP networks is not worth their time and killed the whole openness concept - despite being an orders of magnitude simpler problem than email spam.

I think now the only escape from the walled gardens is regulatory pressure forcing interconnect of the larger players (Facebook, Google, Yahoo etc.) at least at text chat level.

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

#235

Post by Spooky23 »

m_mueller wrote: post #58
Spooky23 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s funny you said that.

One of my colleagues pointed out that the IM client from Exchange 2003 era (I think it was Live Communications Server) and LiveMeeting were a better collaboration platform than SfB, even given the severe limitations on bandwidth and cpu.

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

#236

Post by ZenoArrow »

zanny wrote: post #96
cbhl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My only gripe about Matrix is the lack of a good desktop client, but at the same time trying to wire WebRTC into a desktop app feels almost as bad as C++03 did. Gstreamer just got support for it, but I have no idea if thats enough to implement voice / video conferencing in a Matrix implementation.

It's not exactly what you're describing, but to see an example of a video conference running within a Matrix client...

https://youtu.be/y0-j4Q77KXM?t=14m47s

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

#237

Post by darklajid »

commandar wrote: post #140
jrockway wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to wonder what the product managers were thinking. That billions of people were using WeChat and WhatsApp, and they wanted a piece of that? I'm guessing that's the motivation. As for the enterprise use case, I'm not really sure why nobody cares. Every company I've worked for has had their own internal system for IM-like functionality, some better than others. Microsoft has one included with Outlook whose nam…

>Microsoft has one included with Outlook whose name escapes me. Mircrosoft's current stab at this is called Teams. I think it actually has potential: it's pretty much a clone of Slack, except that MS is willing to declare it compliant with, e.g., HIPAA.

I found it horrible, clients are Electron monsters (but still bo Linux version..) that they shove in your face whenever you try to use the web version.

So far I can stick with Lync/Skype for Business at my day job, which is bad too but.. slimmer, and does the job. Most of the time.

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

#238

Post by ossguy »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #92
pasbesoin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have any recommendations for commercially similar solutions, that also support a proper SIP interface? I'm preparing for that day, when GVoice dies.

https://jmp.chat/ is a good alternative. Text and picture messaging over XMPP, and voice over real SIP (with voicemail transcribed to text).

There are lots of great XMPP clients, such as Conversations on Android, and Gajim or Adium on desktop. Or use https://movim.eu/ if you like a web client. iOS has a few options as well, including Tigase Messenger and IM+.

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

#239

Post by Spooky23 »

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.

I don’t think so. Cisco maybe, but Microsoft is printing money with this tech.

Capturing email, files and love communication drives subscription revenue for E5 SKUs of 365, plus most companies will need Azure AD to meet their security and compliance requirements.

We ran the numbers at work... taking the blue pill and going all on Microsoft will 3x our lifetime value to them vs a standard E3 shop.

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

#240

Post by amedvednikov »

signal11 wrote: post #73
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…

Even if you didn't use Jabber, the #1 reason I recommended Google Talk was that it was very, very lightweight at a time when MSN Messenger and friends were adding stickers and other teenager/young-adult friendly* features. Today, ironically your choices for relatively straightforward messaging on the PC/Mac are: iMessage (Mac only), Skype for Business (the consumer client is too distracting for words), Whatsapp Web,…

I'm working on a lightweight native client for all major messengers:

https://eul.im

It's only 90 KB (!)

Right now there's an old barely usable alpha out, but a new release is coming up next week.

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