Well, now everyone know Google sucks in privacy 'cause doing business on users data. I'm not wonder why their ALL messengers failed.
The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
291–300 of 402 posts
Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
#292This is just an utter mess. Google keeps ignoring and trying to kill Hangouts (which should still be called GChat, that was an incredibly stupid rebrand), and building new products instead of investing in the one which actually has some potential. Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat/Google talk from the early Gmail days and kept investing in it. It was great on the ear…
Want to know an even more stupid rebrand? A totally new, half-baked business product called Hangouts Chat.
> half-baked business product called Hangouts Chat.
So, to compete with Skype for Business?
Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You want XMPP or Matrix.
Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does it work from within a browser yet? Last time I tried, installing Skype was a surprising hassle on my Windows machine; there were at least two versions being offered through various Microsoft channels, and they appeared to have different feature sets, and I couldn't tell which one of them I ought to be using or if one was deprecated. Discord has spoiled me with chat that Just Works on the web.
Try https://preview.web.skype.com/ It is the universal Skype written in React (works natively on windows and electroned on other Desktop OSes)
> Browser not supported
> Use Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome to access Skype for Web (Preview) experience.
> Alternatively, download Skype on your desktop computer.
That is on up to date Firefox on Debian unstable. Bravo.
Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
#295Does 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…
I use skype right now to chat with some friends and it actually works really well for me. Cross platform, video calls, captioning now available is really awesome.
It really doesn't work well. I tried making a simple call with web skype with my parents the other day; neither them - android tablet - nor me - linux desktop - could accept the call when video was on by default. We couldn't turn video on if we initiated a voice call either, because it immediately crashed and stop the call.
We ended up using appear.in without a glitch.
Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
#296I'm pretty sure this blog post was forced due to the recent articles about Hangouts and Allo on 9to5google.com [0], [1]. Thinking that Messages, which uses SMS and RCS were available, would have any impact on messaging is wishful thinking at best. Where I live almost nobody uses SMS for person to person conversations, it's mainly used for package notifications, 2FA codes, and so on. RCS isn't available as far as I kn…
SMS is still huge in the US, especially because of iMessage integration
Yeah I still use it. I never used a messaging app post gtalk. So many different platforms, it just became a nightmare.
I am still after a lovely opensource cross-platform simple distributed secure messaging and video platform.
I'd read that Allo was being abandoned for Messages. And I'd never heard of Duo until this post. Very confused naming and products at Google. I was trying to get my head around the differences between Play Music and Youtube Music yesterday - a case in point.
Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does it work from within a browser yet? Last time I tried, installing Skype was a surprising hassle on my Windows machine; there were at least two versions being offered through various Microsoft channels, and they appeared to have different feature sets, and I couldn't tell which one of them I ought to be using or if one was deprecated. Discord has spoiled me with chat that Just Works on the web.
Try https://preview.web.skype.com/ It is the universal Skype written in React (works natively on windows and electroned on other Desktop OSes)
"Universal":
Browser not supported
Use Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome to access Skype for Web (Preview) experience.
Alternatively, download Skype on your desktop computer.
Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> Google's only product is advertising, Google's main product is user attention, which they sell to advertisers in the form of advertising. Right now, they farm this attention mostly through web search, but hone it through data they collect with other venues, such as e.g. location and other data collected from Android handsets, the vast tentacles of Google Analytics, Google DNS, G-Suite (GMail, G Docs, G Drive, ...)…
A nit: afaik Google's DNS service has committed to never associating data with other Google services. For reference, it's the last bullet point on https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq
Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
#299The 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…
Sounds like the Unix philosophy: "Do one thing and do it well."
Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great behind the scenes view. What is Social? Is that at major product vertical within Google? "Possibly" is a potential good answer here :).
Social was the department that was running Google+ and Hangout, and at one point I think Youtube fell under its control as well? Vic Gundotra was the SVP who ran it. Despite my mixed feelings toward products from Social I had a lot of respect for Vic.
Vic Gundotra was a turkey trying to be an eagle with this stupid twitter commentary.