The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts • Hacker News Board

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#141

Post by brendanmc6 » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

prepend wrote: post #130

brendanmc6 wrote: post #51

I have lived back and forth between Europe and the USA over the last few years. Communication is always the most difficult part of the move. It's a reminder of how far off our tech is from the true ideal. In Europe, everyone has WhatsApp. For a while, this was great! One app, one "to reply" list. A taste of what messaging could be. I quickly found myself frustrated. WhatsApp relies on phone numbers, which muddies up…

I worked around the problem you describe by getting a google voice number and using that at the front end for my real numbers. My GV# is the face for whatsapp, telegram, whatever asks for my number. Also helps that I can send and receive sms over data or WiFi anywhere in the world. Doesn’t work with some sms gateways that don’t y’all GV, but the best international I know. Each country gets a new sim with a local numb…

I tried this a few years ago, it only worked for American customers. But it did save me some money making calls. Last I checked they basically abandoned their mobile app for a near decade...

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#142

Post by bane » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #8

The text of the blog post is very confusing at best. I consistently got the feeling we have no idea how to do messaging, and we are throwing many things to see which one sticks. In other words, the blog post felt like it was a post about telling how we have no idea what we are doing using some thousand words. Messages app is very primitive. I like hangouts way more. I can hop from text message to video chat with fami…

I honestly have no idea what this means for fi. We were made to move over to Hangouts so we could sms from Gmail or something and now it seems to be going away?

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#143

Post by bane » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:24 AM UTC

scotchio wrote: post #115

tehlike wrote: post #8

The text of the blog post is very confusing at best. I consistently got the feeling we have no idea how to do messaging, and we are throwing many things to see which one sticks. In other words, the blog post felt like it was a post about telling how we have no idea what we are doing using some thousand words. Messages app is very primitive. I like hangouts way more. I can hop from text message to video chat with fami…

Hopping from text to video in a single click is cool... But the #1 thing that stops me from even considering buying an Android device is "it's not iMessage". iMessage doesn't have single click to video, but it's also automatic. No hassle at all and I can blue bubble send perfection to any other iPhone-r. It's also synced to all my devices flawlessly. I think that's what is really missing. People don't mind opening an…

That's basically Hangouts. I sms more from my computer than my phone but it's all synced everywhere. I'm even smsing with a co-worker from my tablet right now.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#144

Post by kyrra » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

killjoywashere wrote: post #62

kyrra wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Googler also, also unrelated product) I felt like Allo was actually a really great product. Comparing it's UX and features to other messaging apps out there, I felt like it was one of the most polished (iMessage or FB Messenger being similar). From a product strategy POV, it felt like a product targeting Asia (specifically India, as it launched with Indian themed sticker packs), at least at launch, but that changed…

> Hangouts is... something special. Would you, please, elaborate?

I know too much about it, that I can't say exactly why it's "special", sorry. Most of it would just have to do with internal organizational details.

The below is my take on Hangouts based on it's history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hangouts

It's interesting to remember that it was born out eating multiple existing services (GChat/GoogleTalk, Huddle, and some other things probably). When it launched, it was trying to cleanup Google's fragmented text/video messaging strategy.

One funny thing is how message history search worked. There is no in-app searching history. You can search on the Gmail desktop client and see history, but no where else (no mobile app. Not in Inbox. No-where but gmail desktop).

Along the way they added SMS support for it, which they later scrapped for everyone except Project Fi/Voice customers.

Hangouts has done a lot in the last 5.5 years (since its launch). It may have tried to do too much, which may have caused some problems (especially on usability).

Hangouts Chat and Meet seem to try to start fresh and build a good product focused on business customers. How that plays out for normal gmail consumers has yet to be seen; I'm really hoping they do a good job with it.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#145

Post by warent » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:28 AM UTC

I wonder if what they're doing is trying to refine each individual aspect of communication as much as possible in various apps so that later they can merge them all into one massive super-app. So, email, texting, messaging, video chat, voice, all merged into "Google Human" or something crazy.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#146

Post by JayNitram » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:31 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #143

scotchio wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopping from text to video in a single click is cool... But the #1 thing that stops me from even considering buying an Android device is "it's not iMessage". iMessage doesn't have single click to video, but it's also automatic. No hassle at all and I can blue bubble send perfection to any other iPhone-r. It's also synced to all my devices flawlessly. I think that's what is really missing. People don't mind opening an…

That's basically Hangouts. I sms more from my computer than my phone but it's all synced everywhere. I'm even smsing with a co-worker from my tablet right now.

Agreed, and it was even better before they reduced a lot of the functionality for non Fi users.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#147

Post by pookeh » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:31 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #143

scotchio wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopping from text to video in a single click is cool... But the #1 thing that stops me from even considering buying an Android device is "it's not iMessage". iMessage doesn't have single click to video, but it's also automatic. No hassle at all and I can blue bubble send perfection to any other iPhone-r. It's also synced to all my devices flawlessly. I think that's what is really missing. People don't mind opening an…

That's basically Hangouts. I sms more from my computer than my phone but it's all synced everywhere. I'm even smsing with a co-worker from my tablet right now.

iMessages integrates really well with os x...

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#148

Post by V-eHGsd_ » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:32 AM UTC

as a xoogler, I wish they would've titled this, "an update on allo".

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#149

Post by Analemma_ » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:32 AM UTC

sorenjan wrote: post #57

Does anyone think that now is Microsoft's best chance to revive Skype as a household name synonymous with chat and video calls? I doubt anyone would want to use any chat app from Google anymore, Facebook is getting really bad PR which could affect WhatsApp as well soon enough. Signal and Telegram are good alternatives but lack marketing muscle. Slack and Discord are mainly used for group chat in professional and gami…

They could... if their own messaging strategy wasn’t almost as bad as Google’s. Skype just got a top-to-bottom redesign that everyone hates, and Teams (which may or may not be the replacement for Lync, or Skype for Business, or whatever it’s called now) is like a checklist of everything terrible about Electron applications: it’s slow as molasses, uses boatloads of memory, and has no integration with the host OS. It’s actually worse than Slack, which is an impressive feat!

There’s something hilariously tragic about this being the perfect opportunity for Microsoft to deliver Google a coup-de-grace on messaging, and they can’t do it because they’re just as incompetent.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#150

Post by devereaux » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 5:33 AM UTC

jdofaz wrote: post #56

devereaux wrote: post #20

When google voice was introduced, I ported my phone number. It was nice to use the service. Before that, I had a grandstream ATA. The service was great. Now, everyday feels worse. Last month, I was traveling abroad and had more important things to do than to confirm the cellular number linked to voice was still mine. So google decided not just to stop redirecting phonecalls, but also to stop me from calling using the…

Callcentric can do sms now if you need that

Interesting, even if they don't have an SMS API yet.

I will have to check again their offer, and see if their native client improved.

At the moment I mostly use them for fax and SIP trunking.

Even if twilio is good, I'd rather now have everything in one place.