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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?

#271

Post by ossguy »

smt88 wrote: post #263
vxNsr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, they recently remembered they have it and have begun removing features and options.

This sounds like a cynical joke, but for those people who don't use Voice, it's sadly what's really happening. I want to get off Google products for many reasons, but the main reason is becoming that I can't trust them to listen to users.

For people that use Google Voice, that's often the hardest Google service to leave. You can get similar features with https://jmp.chat/ - it supports text and picture messaging (and voicemail transcription) and you can port in your Google Voice number to make the transition seamless for your contacts.

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

#272

Post by rident »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #69
CydeWeys wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was a big fan of Meebo, personally. Since it was a web app, you could sign in once on any computer and all of your chat clients were there. ...Guess who bought it and killed it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo

Yeah I really liked Meebo too

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

#273

Post by jhasse »

ossguy wrote: post #244
jhasse wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A smartphone isnt required, only a telephone number for authentification.

In these cases you could use a https://jmp.chat/ phone number. No smartphone is required for JMP, only an XMPP client (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16352711 for some client options).

A smartphone isn't required for Telegram either.

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

#274

Post by jhasse »

Vinnl wrote: post #269
jhasse wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you can do the complete setup with the Telegram desktop app, but you need a device which can receive SMS or a phone call.

Oh hmm, looks like I got tangled in the threads - I thought we were discussing Signal. My bad!

Ah I see ;) Yeah the QR code scanning sounded like Signal / WhatsApp, never heard of that method in a Telegram app.

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

#275

Post by nkoren »

The rationale for Google's behaviour has always been that it will help them achieve user lock-in. But disregarding both the technical and ethical merits of this strategy... is it actually working for them? Six years ago I spent very significant proportion of my time using Talk and Reader. In their absence, I have shifted to using FB Messenger (/WhatsApp/Telegram/etc.), with Facebook and Hacker News kinda substituting for Reader. I still use Gmail and Google Apps, but my daily time inside the Google ecosystem has probably decreased by about 2/3rds.

If I'm their target audience, then this strategy is an unqualified failure. Obviously I'm not their target audience -- I'm an outlier in almost every respect -- but I've yet to see an analysis which suggested that Google has actually succeeded in capturing more eyeballs or generating more revenue via this strategy. In fact I haven't really seen any business analysis of this at all, other than blaming the business-types for making these decisions. Which is probably correct, but I'd still be very curious to see whether those decisions paid off, purely on their own terms.

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

#276

Post by rident »

eitally wrote: post #270
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…

The reason they "killed off the jabber client to force users further into their software ecosystem" is because all the other messaging products had decided to move away from an open standard (XMPP/jabber) to proprietary protocols, so there wasn't much point in restricting Google's own ability to innovate around their chat product by keeping it tied to XMPP. We can argue whether that was a good idea or not, but it was…

Sure there were other and earlier offenders, but that doesn't mean Google had to follow suit. They could have contributed something open and federated - an upgrade to XMPP. Branding would have been easy and the darling of the web would have held that image a little longer.

But they didn't, the closing and interconnecting of Google's product ecosystem was the beginning of a trend which is now seen across most of their offerings:

The Pixel has silly restrictions as I mentioned. Android apps, Drive, Docs and the office suite apps have gone stale since they came out of beta and lack the commitment to open source that Google once championed.

Even their new HTML replacement, AMP, is heavily tied to Google resources, requiring entirely different implementations of the same experiences between the HTML and AMP versions further handcuffing the buyer to their ecosystem and the buyer's customers to Chrome.

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

#277

Post by tootie »

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 also haven't seen any substantial innovation in chat for like 30 years. The main value prop hasn't changed since pre-internet days.

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

#278

Post by fauigerzigerk »

LamaOfRuin wrote: post #245
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, what I meant to say is that the SIM card is tied to exactly one telco at any particular time. It's also tied to one device at a time. Perhaps one of the virtual SIM card offerings would work with Signal though. I'm juggling too many SIM cards and phones already. I don't want any new dependencies that complicate matters further.

You only need the sim card active to activate your signal with that number. After that you don't have to be connected to a cell network at all.

But I still need to keep the SIM card active or I could never switch phones (or reinstall the phone OS) without losing my Signal identity.

I cannot ever let go of the phone number I used to activate Signal. In practice, that means I need to keep paying for a phone tariff I may no longer want.

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

#280

Post by nextos »

ossguy wrote: post #261
nextos wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XMPP is a bit complex, and suffers from some problems derived from too much flexibility. The mandatory part of the protocol is too small. This could be fixed by creating a meta XEP that lists all XEPs needed by modern clients. However, it's a very capable protocol. Just see how nice conversations.im is. It doesn't even use GCM, and both latency and energy usage are fantastic.

Such a meta XEP exists already: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0387.html#im If you use a client that conforms to the Advanced Client requirements of the IM and Mobile Compliance Suites (with a similarly up-to-par server), you will have a very good experience.

The problem is that selection is still limited if you factor in OMEMO support (end-to-end encryption):

https://omemo.top/

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