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Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

9to5google.com

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Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#141

Post by xuki »

doodliego wrote: post #131
ams6110 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put Google Drive/Docs/Sheets in there as home runs. They just keep getting better and better. I hardly ever think about using a desktop office suite any more. Remember when collaborating on a document meant emailing copies and revisions back and forth to each other? Unthinkable now. But Allo? My thought was "oh, another Google product I never heard of is shutting down."

No way do I put all my personal documents in the cloud of a company that doesn't do customer service, gets rid of whole product lines without warning whenever it feels like, and has no recourse to actual human help if you're locked out of your accounts and can't get authenticated. You would want to back up your google documents offline or on another server constantly, which defeats the whole purpose.

You can pay for G Suite, it's not that expensive. I'm on a grandfathered plan (free) - so no phone support but email support is available, and the agent even called me to check if I was able to resolve my problem.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#142

Post by dragonwriter »

gomox wrote: post #88
SwellJoe wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what Meet is. When I add an event in Google Calender, there is an "Add Conferencing" dropdown...in it is "Hangouts". That adds a conference link to the event, which I can then share with whoever I want to meet with. When it comes time to meet, I open the email reminder, or look in my calendar, and click the link. Everybody shows up...we meet. That's Hangouts, as far as I know. It opens in the Hangouts gr…

That thing you are describing used to be Hangouts, but is now Meet.

It's actually Hangouts Meet, so you are both right. Or both wrong, whatever.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#143

Post by dragonwriter »

wyldfire wrote: post #121
gomox wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thing you are describing used to be Hangouts, but is now Meet.

Branding / re-branding is clearly not one of Google's strengths. Why change the name? Just change the feature set.

They didn't change the name so much as add disambiguation when they split the product. The broke Hangouts (for business, though this is now apparently coming for consumers too) into two apps, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#144

Post by dragonwriter »

SwellJoe wrote: post #140
gomox wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you go to the actual conference in the calendar event, do you still see a Hangouts URL and UI? Maybe we are on different sides of an A/B test.

Literally everything I see has Hangouts branding. And, not just for me or my events...I was invited to a meeting with someone from another company yesterday, and everything about it was branded with "Hangouts" and not "Meet", too. Also, the Google Meet website is laughably useless. It has literally no content, not even a description of what it is.

> Also, the Google Meet website is laughably useless. It has literally no content, not even a description of what it is.

“Video meetings for your business.

Connect with your team from anywhere. With easy-to-join video calls, you can meet face to face without the added cost of travel.”

https://gsuite.google.com/products/meet/

EDIT: I just realized there is a separate “Google Meet” page which has no SERP summary and just redirects to the Play Store page for the Hangouts Meet app (at least, on Android.)

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#145

Post by muthdra »

woodruffw wrote: post #19

Google dumped an incredible amount of money into Allo's marketing at my (large state) university -- they plastered many buildings with full-length advertisements, filled all of the local businesses with pamphlets, and even drove students around campus in weird little (electric?) buggies[1]. Despite all that, I don't think I know anybody who installed (much less regularly used) Allo. Edit: They also bought Snapchat fi…

I live in Brazil and there were Allo ads on television, which was very unusual for a messaging app.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#146

Post by jayess »

codeulike wrote: post #39
burger_moon wrote: post #33

Does anyone have a good alternative for someone who is not tech savvy at all and on an Android phone? I set this up on my mom’s phone because she doesn’t get good enough cell reception at or around her place so an internet based messaging system works best. She is in very poor health and can barely hold the phone so something that doesn’t have a lot of small icons and in general just easy to setup and use would be gr…

Why not WhatsApp? Very simple interface, although rumour has it, ads might start appearing soon.

Or Signal, because it's not Facebook.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#147

Post by AlexandrB »

baroffoos wrote: post #63
gundmc wrote: post #22

Hacker News: LOL! Google has so many messaging apps, their product strategy sucks! Google: They're right, we need to focus our messaging strategy. Let's consolidate our platforms. Hacker News: OMG! Google deprecates everything! Classic Google

Google starts and ends products so fast I can't even tell you what the current google messaging system is.

Exactly right. When I read that Google was shutting down Hangouts, I started thinking that the startup I work at would have to move to Slack. Then I slowly realized/remembered that Chat is not Hangouts. I can't keep these things straight anymore.

I had completely forgotten about Allo until I read this headline.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#148

Post by gomox »

SwellJoe wrote: post #140
gomox wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you go to the actual conference in the calendar event, do you still see a Hangouts URL and UI? Maybe we are on different sides of an A/B test.

Literally everything I see has Hangouts branding. And, not just for me or my events...I was invited to a meeting with someone from another company yesterday, and everything about it was branded with "Hangouts" and not "Meet", too. Also, the Google Meet website is laughably useless. It has literally no content, not even a description of what it is.

Here's how a random invite looks like for me:

https://imgur.com/a/I9NlO4X

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#150

Post by fouc »

darzu wrote: post #65
8ytecoder wrote: post #45

Google feels like a company that's run by a bunch of engineers/product managers instead of a product leader with a cohesive vision. Anyone with an iPhone would understand what iMessages is and what FaceTime is. What is what and what you can do with each. Now explain it to me Google - what's your vision? (Or is it "target end state" in engineering speak?) As customers we want (at most) one chat application and one vid…

It's ironic you pick Google Maps as the one product that "gets it right". Did you hear about the recent pricing scandal? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570029

That's only screwing the other sites that integrate with google maps. Not so much the end user that is using google maps directly.
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