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Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

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Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#161

Post by techrat »

mkr-hn wrote: post #144
techrat wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early adopter curse. I remember buying the first DVD Recorder on the market and being pissed later on that I couldn't burn the (much better) DVD+R type discs in my drive. I never switched from my carrier to Project Fi. Never switched to Hangouts. Never switched to Inbox. Never switched to Allo and Duo. So as far as I'm concerned... Gmail and Google Voice have pretty much always been working as intended for me. It's k…

Google's beta in production strategy worked great when they were turning whole categories on their heads. I'm not sure it still works for them given the reputational damage. They're creating an in for more focused upstarts to swoop in and disrupt them piece by piece.

My concern is that there really isn't much left to 'turn on their heads' anymore. When Gmail came around, webmail was mostly hot garbage. Things just have matured since and well... I can now almost understand the culture issue that Google has now: Needing to reinvent something new instead of making what exists better. (And that's also entirely the problem)

Can't wait for Project Back to the Basics. If it ever happens.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#162

Post by gonehome »

simonh wrote: post #142
NicoJuicy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have one huge cash cow that funds the entire company Office, windows, Azure/development, Xbox/gaming are all integrated and cash cows.

I addressed XBox specifically. They wrote off $1.5Bn over the XBox 360 red rings of death issue. It's possible they might have recouped that since, with inflation and interest adjustment, but doubtful. Windows and Azure are the tent poles I was thinking of when I said they had more than one now. I tend to see Windows and Office as fundamentally the same business though, along with development tools, in the same way t…

Arguably Windows was starting to fail and Microsoft appeared to be in serious trouble. Then Nadella replaced Ballmer and corrected course: https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/

Now they’ve pivoted to grow azure and O365 successfully in addition to leverage the Xbox via game pass to fit into that strategic world.

I think this mostly supports your point - it took an existential crisis and ousting a CEO that couldn’t adapt in order to save them when their cash cow started to falter.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#163

Post by ViViDboarder »

di4na wrote: post #68
oblio wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs All those were launched more than a decade ago, though.

And not really iterated on... Maps got slightly better but Gmail and GDoc were uh... not really refactored into better stuff

I use Google Docs nearly daily for work and they have definitely gotten new features over the last few years. Mostly around better collaboration. A few notable ones: @mentioning prime in a doc, assigning actionable comments as action items, automated creation of action items in meeting notes.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#164

Post by rovr138 »

simonh wrote: post #152
busymom0 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time Apple’s stuff has improved year over year. Out of all the large tech companies I’m most bearish about Google’s future - they seem aimless. Deepmind is cool, but Google better hope that ad money machine never stops printing. As an iOS user, I feel the opposite in most areas except calling/messaging/facetime. I find Apple software to be severely limiting their own hardware. Their iPads are such excel…

As against all the awesome tables OSes and applications on competing devices? I think it's just that growing tablets to be competitive with desktops is either really, really hard or just not reasonable to expect. As a form factor, for all that I love it and you'd have to tear my iPad out of my cold dead hands, it just has inherent limitations to go with it's strengths.

> As against all the awesome tables OSes and applications on competing devices?

Not them, but my argument would be compared against a full desktop OS.

I love the form factor and for smaller things, if I had a full blown OS, I would be able to do so much more and not carry both my laptop and my iPad.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#165

Post by rektide »

zmmmmm wrote: post #40

Amazingly Hangouts is still the most cross platform, generally usable and useful chat app I have ... it even still accepts XMPP connections. And of course, they are trying to kill it. (at least that is what the message I got last night said) ... sigh.

Had no idea Hangouts still had XMPP connectivity, wow!

I really feel like the article is massively missing out for not mentioning that Talk/Hangouts had interoperability, that you could Bring Your Own Software.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#166

Post by rektide »

gerash wrote: post #17
Gustomaximus wrote: post #13

I feel they missed out massively in not centralising the communications standards. Not sure if this was realistic or the new products were trying to create whole new tech that stopped this but when they saw different directions some core standards for interoperability would have helped. So if you had Hangouts and I had Allo we could still chat as least in the most standard was of voice/video/message. Proliferation wo…

Phone lines have this solved. You don't need to be on ATT to call someone on ATT. I don't get what's the deal with the messaging platforms. I hope some regulation forces interoperability.

> Phone lines have this solved.

Never bring a hardware solution to a software problem.

Communications should happen on the internet. Not on switched lines. Hard disagree with the proposal here that phone lines solve interoperability. Have you tried starting a phone company? How fun was that?

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#167

Post by NicoJuicy »

simonh wrote: post #142
NicoJuicy wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have one huge cash cow that funds the entire company Office, windows, Azure/development, Xbox/gaming are all integrated and cash cows.

I addressed XBox specifically. They wrote off $1.5Bn over the XBox 360 red rings of death issue. It's possible they might have recouped that since, with inflation and interest adjustment, but doubtful. Windows and Azure are the tent poles I was thinking of when I said they had more than one now. I tend to see Windows and Office as fundamentally the same business though, along with development tools, in the same way t…

> I tend to see Windows and Office as fundamentally the same business though, along with development tools, i

What? Windows, Office ( cross-platform since recently) and dev tools are totally different cash cows.

The ring of death ( = console) isn't even related to the cash cow in consoles. It's the 30% commission on 60€ games.

Anti-competitive behavior for not releasing it to other platforms in the past, doesn't mean it's "just an add-on".

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#168

Post by NicoJuicy »

gonehome wrote: post #162
simonh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I addressed XBox specifically. They wrote off $1.5Bn over the XBox 360 red rings of death issue. It's possible they might have recouped that since, with inflation and interest adjustment, but doubtful. Windows and Azure are the tent poles I was thinking of when I said they had more than one now. I tend to see Windows and Office as fundamentally the same business though, along with development tools, in the same way t…

Arguably Windows was starting to fail and Microsoft appeared to be in serious trouble. Then Nadella replaced Ballmer and corrected course: https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ Now they’ve pivoted to grow azure and O365 successfully in addition to leverage the Xbox via game pass to fit into that strategic world. I think this mostly supports your point - it took an existential crisis and ousting a CEO that…

Windows never failed in desktop OS. And didn't succeed in mobile in the first place.

Nadella could quickly release office cross-platform because of work during Ballmer.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#169

Post by simonh »

rovr138 wrote: post #164
simonh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As against all the awesome tables OSes and applications on competing devices? I think it's just that growing tablets to be competitive with desktops is either really, really hard or just not reasonable to expect. As a form factor, for all that I love it and you'd have to tear my iPad out of my cold dead hands, it just has inherent limitations to go with it's strengths.

> As against all the awesome tables OSes and applications on competing devices? Not them, but my argument would be compared against a full desktop OS. I love the form factor and for smaller things, if I had a full blown OS, I would be able to do so much more and not carry both my laptop and my iPad.

I'm glad Apple are putting in better support for keyboards and touch pads in iPadOS. It makes sense that these can improve usability in a lot of use cases. However I don't use those and even if I did iPad apps must always be usable without them.

I think that imposes significant limitations. Some of the more powerful apps I use on my iPad have quite fiddly interfaces that would be fine on a desktop, but are really awkward on the tablet. It is getting better, but very slowly as developers figure out how to adapt to the form factor.

The new Multitasking interface does look like a big improvement though. Hopefully that will help developers to step up a bit.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#170

Post by gonehome »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #168
gonehome wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably Windows was starting to fail and Microsoft appeared to be in serious trouble. Then Nadella replaced Ballmer and corrected course: https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ Now they’ve pivoted to grow azure and O365 successfully in addition to leverage the Xbox via game pass to fit into that strategic world. I think this mostly supports your point - it took an existential crisis and ousting a CEO that…

Windows never failed in desktop OS. And didn't succeed in mobile in the first place. Nadella could quickly release office cross-platform because of work during Ballmer.

Desktop operating systems as a differentiating feature started being a strategic failure because of the web. Ballmer doubled down on Windows at the expense of other stuff.

There is a common HN trope that Ballmer was doing everything perfectly and Nadella just continued it.

I don’t buy it and neither did the market. (Neither did Microsoft’s board presumably)

I think Ballmer’s entire strategic direction was long-term wrong and Nadella changed it. This isn’t to say no projects started under Ballmer (they definitely did) it’s about whether those were prioritized or would have ever shipped under him successfully.

If the wrong things are considered important - it doesn’t really matter what projects are happening.

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