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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?

#361

Post by cpeterso »

eridius wrote: post #344
cpeterso wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it launched in 2013, Hangouts used an NPAPI plugin that worked in most browsers. In 2014, Google ported Hangouts to WebRTC for Chrome only because it relied on non-standard WebRTC features only implemented in Chrome. Note that Firefox did support WebRTC at this time and Mozilla in fact developed its own WebRTC video chat service in 2014 called "Hello" that worked in Firefox and Chrome. In 2015, Mozilla announced…

Thanks for the info. I totally forgot Hangouts was still using an NPAPI plugin, and I didn't realize Firefox dropped support for those too. Doesn't explain why Safari wouldn't be supported though, as Safari still supports NPAPI plugins.

I haven't tested Safari, but Hangouts' system requirements say it supports Safari and IE using the NPAPI plugin:

https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/2944865?visit_id=...

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

#362

Post by amedvednikov »

tramtrist wrote: post #349
amedvednikov wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

v0.26 used to do that. Not v0.27. And yes, v0.27 is a 90KB native app. It will be released on Feb 14.

Pretty impressive. Any chance of tying it to IRSSI or making an IRC gateway like bitlbee? I connect to almost all those services through bitlbee already and it works pretty well. Add Naver Line support as well and I'm sold..

IRC is supported, so you can use bitlbee with eul.

Line messenger is not supported, but eul is modular, and everyone will be able to add support of custom messengers in the future as long as they have an open API (which Line seems to have).

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

#363

Post by zimpenfish »

philwelch wrote: post #170
abtinf wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantic nitpicking: The A in AIM stands for AOL. The A in AOL stands for America.

The A in AOL used to stand for America, but now AOL doesn't stand for anything, much like the K in KFC used to stand for Kentucky.

> much like the K in KFC used to stand for Kentucky.

It always did (they just weren't going to pay Kentucky for their fraudulent trademark) and still does - https://www.snopes.com/lost/kfc.asp

> In November 2006, KFC and the State of Kentucky finally reached an undisclosed settlement over the former’s use of the trademarked word “Kentucky,” and the restaurant chain announced it would be resuming its former name of “Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

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

#364

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #285
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose you live in a country where the telcos offer free SMS. In Spain they cost money, so almost no one uses SMS for personal messaging. All the SMSs I get are from companies.

In Germany there's a bunch of different options when signing up with a provider, eg I have one where I pay 2€ extra per month for 100 SMS which is plenty for me. For 4€ I'd get like 300 or so. Its the same pricing for free minutes for domestic calls (normal landline or mobile, no service numbers obviously).

I think it's similar here, but 300 SMS/month (i.e., 10/day) wouldn't be even close to enough for the average Spanish user. Whatsapp usage is huge here. Many people do all their routine personal communication using it, and then they have a group for the family, a group for coworkers, a group for friends, a school parents group where they all complain about their kids' homework, etc. Of course, they also send photos and videos (which I'm not sure if are covered by SMS plans or you need that exotic thing called MMS).

And even if it were enough, a Spanish user won't pay 2 or 4 € for something that they can get for free. In fact when Whatsapp had the idea of charging a symbolic amount and suspended access to some accounts due to not paying, people started switching to Telegram en masse (Telegram even went down due to that), then they gave back access and abandoned the idea of charging.

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

#365

Post by Shoothe »

wyclif wrote: post #356
Shoothe wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly that's also my thoughts about Google. When previously they were open and leading the innovation now they are just blindly copying competition in hope of somehow making it big. Twitter? Google Buzz... Didn't work. Facebook? Google+... Didn't work. Whatsapp? Allo... Didn't work.

Google+... Didn't work. Actually, I just went over there and Google+ looks like it's working just fine. Many parts of it are thriving and there seems to be a lot of activity in communities. Google+ is niche. Just because it doesn't have the ubiquitous adoption level of Facebook doesn't mean it failed. I really hate this attitude in our circles that unless an app devours everything else and becomes a unicorn, it's a t…

> I really hate this attitude in our circles

Maybe I wasn't clear. My point is that it is Google's attitude right now. If a product is not "a unicorn" they instead rush to something else (Talk->Hangouts->Allo) or kill it (Reader, Wave). Being niche product in Google is just dangerous for that product.

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

#366

Post by slivym »

promopacket wrote: post #46

There is a running joke within Google that the best way to get promoted is to create another chat or video conferencing app. Is it really a joke at this point, though? Googler engineering leaders and teams engaging in the replacement of good chat tech with worse happens every year or two. All to demonstrate "cross-org impact" and climb the promo ladder. This is in fact the driving force behind many of the complaints…

It really makes you wonder why there is no one in the organisation saying "This is a fantastic new product, with truly innovative work. Why did you feel the need to create an internal competitor to it rather than help make it better"

One of the most destructive issues I see from my time in management has been engineers who are more interested in re-writing what other people have already done. It seems amazing to me an organisation the size of Google hasn't identified the waste here.

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

#367

Post by ossguy »

vxNsr wrote: post #358
ossguy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks. Am I correct in assuming this is your project? How long have you been working on it? What's the exit strategy look like? How big is the team currently? I noticed that your blog hasn't updated in over two years, while I recognize that making blog posts is time-consuming, when it comes to software that just gives the feeling that the author has abandoned the project. Maybe consider linking to an area you still…

https://jmp.chat/ is a project I started, yes. There are about a dozen other people who work on it to varying extents (you can get a sense of this from the commit logs, some of which are linked below).

Based on https://gitlab.com/ossguy/sgx-catapult/commits/master and https://gitlab.com/ossguy/jmp-fwdcalls/commits/master it looks like I've been working on JMP's codebase for a little over 13 months now. Prior to that I worked on JMP's precursor (see https://github.com/ossguy/sopranica - also called "Phase 0"), which started about 4 years ago, and was more part-time.

Since I and a lot of my friends depend on JMP for their everyday communication, I'm not really interested in "exiting". If the project were to be sold, it would have to be to someone who cared about keeping the software free and open source, and who wanted to keep it on a federated network. I suspect going public would be a bad idea, because most of the public (i.e. investors) doesn't(/don't) care about JMP's values.

We publish an update on JMP and related projects every 1-2 months. We recently started using Mailman so you can find the past couple updates at https://soprani.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jmp-news and signup if you like. For day-to-day updates, you can join our group chat at https://anonymous.cheogram.com/discuss@conference.soprani.ca (more options for joining are at https://jmp.chat/#support , including directly from your XMPP client). That's where the majority of project-related communication happens.

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

#368

Post by fencepost »

kalleboo wrote: post #72
fencepost wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be able to use Slack or Discord, though I don't believe either offer video options and the only real mention of voice that I saw for Slack was for calls. Still, Discord might actually be worth looking at - it's targeted at gamers, but it does at least small-group voice chat reasonably well in my experience.

Our company switched from Skype to Discord after the new Skype client came out and have been happy with it.

If you haven't already, consider having at least some of your folks sign up for Nitro so Discord can stay viable.

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

#369

Post by philtar »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #325
notzorbo3 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A smartphone isnt required It is for Whatsapp. Not only for sign-up, but actually all communication on the web version goes through the app running on your phone. The web "session" times out constantly, so I'd have to re-pair it with my phone all the time. If I still decided to use whatsapp.

To be really pedantic; a smartphone is not required for WhatsApp. You can activate a Google voice number with a landline, then use your Google voice number to activate WhatsApp running in BlueStacks or your emulator of choice. Source: I did this for a few months. I'm not quite sure why...

A smartphone OS is required for whatsapp

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

#370

Post by JBReefer »

mistermann wrote: post #351
hedora wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their initial search UI was great, though they ruined that too. I switched away years ago, and am increasingly baffled whenever I accidentally run a google search.

Switched to what though?

DuckDuckGo is really good - maybe where Google was a year ago but without the user tracking. Also, bangs are awesome.
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