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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

#251

Post by joenathanone »

millstone wrote: post #159

I've been in many come-to-Jesus meetings wherein Leadership acknowledges their strategic failures, then busts out a presentation detailing the New Strategy, consisting of mild tweaks of the Existing Strategy. Mild tweaks are great because they spare Leadership the pain of making hard decisions. > And by refocusing on Messages and Duo for consumers and Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet for team collaboration "Instead of…

They also fail to address Google Voice, their VOIP/SMS-OIP app. Here's to hoping they don't cancel it down the line too.

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

#252

Post by joenathanone »

paxys wrote: post #175
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…

Skype is basically dead at this point, and Microsoft is instead focusing efforts towards its Slack competitor.

Only dead for business, MS is still heavily invested in Skype and just released a major update on all platforms.

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

#253

Post by owenwil »

pookeh wrote: post #208
grogenaut wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

os x, ios, and nothing else. That's the thing I like about gchat, it works everywhere.

Sure but I am talking about the quality of product and the vision. There is coherence. Gchat works everywhere but is not well integrated with anything. Disclaimer: there are no ios devices in my house and I am android guy all the way. But wow does messaging suck compared to ios world

There's coherence? Try sending a message with an effect to a Mac user. (Sent with Fireworks)

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

#254

Post by xte »

chalupa-man wrote: post #248
xte wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I couldn't possibly disagree more. Voice comms are _hideously_ inefficient and limited compared to chats and virtually always an inferior option in a group context, in a professional context, and especially for a professional team. They always interrupt one person, and every additional person involved is a decision about how much more time and attention to take and how many more interruptions to make balanced against…

Try the two with a chess timer aside. I have done that many time and see the result. Doing a thing at a time, so being interrupted, prove to be FAR more productive than doing many thing at a time.

Of course if you interact with professional people, if you have to interact with brainless individuals that can't even express themselves in their language well... It's another story, but even in this case it's wasted time.

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

#255

Post by Uberphallus »

luhn wrote: post #229
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Pretty standard role in a software team. The person who determines what the end result should look like.

It can be Product Manager too. Product Manager has more of a focus on customer/marketing, whereas Project Manager oversees the technical teams implementing Product Manager's ideas.

A Product Manager doesn't need to have a technical background, but a Project Manager should.

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

#256

Post by gdfasfklshg4 »

luhn wrote: post #229
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Pretty standard role in a software team. The person who determines what the end result should look like.

From context it is a Product Manager.

Project Manager: manages day-to-day running for project e.g. fighting for the right number of devs, designers etc

Product Manager: (also product owner) determines what the product should look like.

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

#257

Post by tubaguy50035 »

Eridrus wrote: post #72
dkhenry wrote: post #32

What gets me about the entire Google messaging ecosystem is how they manage to be so bad. My messaging system of choice is Signal, and it looks to be about three or four full time people that work on that. It manages to handle SMS, Grop Chat, Video Chat, and End to End encrypted chat for me. I imagine there are more Vice Presidents assigned to Allo then there are employees at Signal, and signal manages to out compete…

Signal and Allo actually have a similar number of installs, they're both in the 10-50m installs bucket in the Play store. I use Signal, but it's fine at best, but it's not really going to break out of it's niche.

I can't deal with how signal desktop works. I DO NOT want messaging tied to my phone. I want it tied to an account that works wherever I sign in. I'd love to use Signal, but can't deal with that.

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

#258

Post by otabdeveloper1 »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #227
Cookingboy wrote: post #188

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.

> focusing on making actual useful products

A 'product' is something you sell to clients.

Google's only product is advertising, and they don't need to focus on making better advertising because they are a monopoly.

Everything else Google does is just a smokescreen for investors and a creeping fear that they won't be able to exist in a post-monopoly world.

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

#260

Post by tubaguy50035 »

scarejunba wrote: post #214

WhatsApp is better than any of this nonsense. It has all the features and more. Hangouts/GoogleTalk was nice. Don’t know what this profusion of crap is for.

Turn your phone off and send a message to someone from your computer. Oh wait...
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