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The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there when that happened. The whole rebranding/transition of GTalk/GChat was the result of some political muscle flex by Social and its army of PMs, then after Social lost its favorite child status Allo was born as a result, championed by another army of PMs, and I wonder if Duo had a similar story of birth. >Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat/Google talk from t…

What is a PM? I am getting insight into how google works because this sounds like a bunch of idiotic internal wars between acronym teams instead of focusing on making actual useful products.

project manager

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

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there when that happened. The whole rebranding/transition of GTalk/GChat was the result of some political muscle flex by Social and its army of PMs, then after Social lost its favorite child status Allo was born as a result, championed by another army of PMs, and I wonder if Duo had a similar story of birth. >Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat/Google talk from t…

What is a PM? I am getting insight into how google works because this sounds like a bunch of idiotic internal wars between acronym teams instead of focusing on making actual useful products.

Not OP but I assume project managers

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there when that happened. The whole rebranding/transition of GTalk/GChat was the result of some political muscle flex by Social and its army of PMs, then after Social lost its favorite child status Allo was born as a result, championed by another army of PMs, and I wonder if Duo had a similar story of birth. >Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat/Google talk from t…

What is a PM? I am getting insight into how google works because this sounds like a bunch of idiotic internal wars between acronym teams instead of focusing on making actual useful products.

Could also be Product Manager.

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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hangouts integrates your Google Voice and Google Fi texts right into web pages like GMail, contacts, etc. And this works even if your phone is off, lost, broken, or has no service. Hangouts also works on any device with an internet connection if you log in. You can text and call from your number on literally any device just by signing into hangouts. None of the multitude of other redundant Google messaging products d…

I agree with you 100%. Most of the time when I'm receiving a text I'm sitting in front of my computer with a Gmail tab open. So the ability to text back directly from my computer (with a full size keyboard) is absolutely the killer feature of Hangouts integrating the Google Voice/Fi phone number.

I simply cannot imagine using anything else. Those who haven't experienced this workflow don't know what they are missing.

I do 200-400 texts weekly and this saves me easily 1 hour per week in gained efficiency (context switching, fumbling with phone fingerprint unlocking, composing text on small phone keyboard...)

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

#235
If anyone is looking for a video conferencing alternative to Hangouts, I can't recommend enough http://gotalk.to

I have no affiliation and only came to know about them a couple weeks back from a recommendation from someone here.

Is phenomenal. It changed the way I work remote.

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

#236

Resurrect wave and rule them all

The best part about Wave was that it was/is federated, so your data isn't completely siloed like basically every other modern app mentioned in this thread. It's more like e-mail. With sufficient resourcing, it could have revolutionized communication.

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

#237
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to know an even more stupid rebrand? A totally new, half-baked business product called Hangouts Chat.

There no polite way of expressing it: Hangouts Chat is a shitty product. We moved to Chat when Hipchat was closed. Because we’re using G-suite it seem sensible to go with Chat, but everyone hates it. The UI is useless, Google try to be clever about “conversation” and tries to group them together, but now people miss most conversations that happen when they aren’t looking. Notification is broken, you can only get to m…

Our team was in exact same situation. Chat is still missing some features, but I definitely prefer it over HipChat already. Still a compromise in comparison to Flowdock or even Slack, but it gets the job done.

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

#238
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There no polite way of expressing it: Hangouts Chat is a shitty product. We moved to Chat when Hipchat was closed. Because we’re using G-suite it seem sensible to go with Chat, but everyone hates it. The UI is useless, Google try to be clever about “conversation” and tries to group them together, but now people miss most conversations that happen when they aren’t looking. Notification is broken, you can only get to m…

A small sidenote: chats are shitty concept in general. They have had a reason in a past era when voice coms are expensive and limited, they have a reason in terminals to broadcast few messages, no more. For real communication we have letter so in digital world mails or we have phone calls so in digital world VoIP one's extended with eventually video/screen sharing and conferencing capabilities, no more. Discord, Slac…

> A small sidenote: chats are shitty concept in general. They have had a reason in a past era when voice coms are expensive and limited, they have a reason in terminals to broadcast few messages, no more.

Not at all. Voice chat is synchronous - you must stop whatever you're doing and listen or talk in real time. And people nearby will overhear.

Chat is asynchronous and private. I can chat and consult a colleague while I'm in a meeting with a client. I can keep a chat open while coding and read/respond when I'm not most concentrated. I can go offline and answer a question the next day.

Text chat isn't literally "chatting through text". It's email with a different UX, more suited for quick communication.

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there when that happened. The whole rebranding/transition of GTalk/GChat was the result of some political muscle flex by Social and its army of PMs, then after Social lost its favorite child status Allo was born as a result, championed by another army of PMs, and I wonder if Duo had a similar story of birth. >Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat/Google talk from t…

What is a PM? I am getting insight into how google works because this sounds like a bunch of idiotic internal wars between acronym teams instead of focusing on making actual useful products.

[deleted]

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

#240
post #29

How about having only one app where i can simply use messaging and video? why do i need to install 4 different apps for it?

Why not open the protocol, so I can use the one app for all my cross-service messaging needs? e.g. Pidgin.

Where's the money in that?
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