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

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

#331

Post by barrkel » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 12:36 PM UTC

sorenjan wrote: post #34

I'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…

I don't use Android's Messages for SMS, I installed a special-purpose SMS app specifically to avoid mixing Internet-based messages with SMS-based messages. I have zero interest in intermixing the two.

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

#332

Post by barrkel » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 12:38 PM 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…

Messages mixes up SMS with chat, exactly what I don't want. SMS messages are usually used for couriers notifying about delivery, and spam. I use an SMS-only app on Android to make sure things don't get mixed up. I don't need SMS junk in my chats.

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

#333

Post by acd10j » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 12:41 PM UTC

Quick quiz ? Could someone please let me know what is the new brand name of chat that loads with Gmail Web ?

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

#334

Post by Waterluvian » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 12:43 PM UTC

Cookingboy wrote: post #188

jordanthoms wrote: post #164

This 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…

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…

This is exactly what I suspected Google to be like but I always assumed I was just stereotyping. A bunch of competing teams and internal politics frustrating the ability to have coherence and "synergy".

I once worked at a startup that made the mistake of hiring an entire remote product team from silicon valley. All they did in the year before they mass resigned was inject drama and politics into everything and force some really bad design decisions that will quite possibly kill the company in a year or so. Got me thinking what it must be like at scale.

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

#335

Post by chii » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 12:50 PM UTC

herewulf wrote: post #236

mikehines wrote: post #2

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.

I heard over the grape vine that wave was killed in political maneuvers of management (as they deliberately did not build integrations into email for wave, thus causing adoption issues).

The tech is incredibly good! It had so much potential, and yet...

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

#336

Post by mcintyre1994 » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 1:00 PM 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…

Last time I had the Skype app installed it was trying to clone Snapchat and crashed when I tried to message someone. Admittedly that was a while ago, but I'm not sure where they were trying to go with it.

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

#337

Post by distant_hat » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 1:00 PM 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…

While we are a Google shop for the most part when it comes to messaging, we use Skype for colleagues in China or when traveling there. It is far better quality compared to Hangouts in the Great Firewall.

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

#338

Post by iainmerrick » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

Cookingboy wrote: post #286

unixhero wrote: post #281

Earlier 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.

Can you expand on that? I feel like many people are negative about Vic G so I’m curious about what positive points you might see.

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

#339

Post by candiodari » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #326

debatem1 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks. I would take that (as anything else) with a grain of salt. They might not today, but things change and they might tomorrow (you know, they used to "not be evil" and they aren't anymore). Furthermore, rest assured that everyone who can, which includes - but is not limited to - three letter agencies, is monitoring traffic into 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

On the other hand, most of the big ISPs have been caught not just handing your DNS requests over to advertisers along with the info they have on you, but actually sending back false dns replies because of advertiser money.

And if you compare to what happens on hotels' or other such dns servers.

I'm saying, perhaps things will change at Google, but they'd have to change a whole lot before they'd be as bad as the normal alternative.

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

#340

Post by gcb0 » Thu, Dec 06, 2018, 1:06 PM UTC

jhall1468 wrote: post #250

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…

For the record, project managers aren't the problem. Google having no clue how to hire good product managers is the problem. This is why Amazon doesn't have problems like this, our PM's really are world class. But our obsession with mid-level managers is getting out of hand, so I suppose we're all headed in the same direction.

that's how it starts. first the middle managers, then good engineers leave because of said middle managers. then middle managers hire troves of contractors to justify their jobs. then contractors who knows where the bodies are buried become the new engineers. and then you have a Google.