Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#21

Post by mrweasel » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

Gualdrapo wrote: post #7

I can't understand why they ditched XMPP for corporative Google accounts. Our uni uses Google services but for their stupid chat I have to keep a Hangouts tab opened because most XMPP clients won't work with it.

While I don't know, I have a guess: Google loves building infrastructure, and they're pretty good at it. XMPP wasn't build in-house, and writing a replacement protocol was something Google could do.

What Google absolutely suck at is UI and native applications (at least on the desktop). It's also why their products keep failing. Seriously how hard would it be to build native clients or open the protocol and have it integrated into libpurple. I find it extremely hard to comprehend why Google don't just hire five of the worlds best macOS developer, five Windows developers and five for Linux/BSD and just let them build fantastic clients that integrates into each platform and provide the very best chat experience.

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#22

Post by jeffbee » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

bitcuration wrote: post #10

The truth is, other than search engine advertising, google doesn't know how to make money.

Close, but not quite. The only thing Google knows how to do is make dirt-cheap large-scale computers and hire people. Then they let the people do whatever they want with the giant cloud, because the marginal cost is nothing.

So, the reason that gchat etc keep appearing and disappearing is because there never was a plan for it in the first place. One or a few engineers just threw it together at some point and there it was. Nobody truly owned it, it wasn't strategic. The churn is just a superficial symptom of the bottom-up product management style.

There are tons of Google products and features that were thrown together by individuals or pairs of people over a weekend and then subsequently got launched to the public. That this is possible is pretty neat, but that the products might not be durable is a downside.

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#23

Post by jeffbee » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #11

> How did it come to pass that they took an easy, integrated system and mangled it so badly? I think each of these things were part of gmail at different times. Google talk (their original chat that competed with Yahoo messenger) was and sorta still is there even though the talk product is something else now. Google voice was required for SMS. It sorta worked from gmail, for a while. Then they tried to merge all the…

Google Voice was not required for SMS from gmail. You used to just be able to "chat" with any phone number from within the gmail web frontend. It cost a dime, but your dime was refunded if the other party responded, as an anti-spam measure.

It was also formerly possible to make a voice call to any phone from the gmail web frontend, no Google Voice account required. Now you need Google Voice to do this (not Google Fi!).

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#24

Post by mrweasel » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

vaseem wrote: post #19

bitcuration wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail has. Knock on the wood.

Actually it hasn't. Ever get annoyed whether your email is in primary, updates, promotions or social. Previously I had rules, almost all marketing went to labels or trash. Is it just me or have the rules become inconsistent?

I think I might be in the minority.I never use Gmail (GSuite, at work) via the browser, but I still use Gmail, it's just via IMAP or "native" Gmail integration.

I was never blown away by the user interface, but many rely on the gmail interface to manage their emails effectively.

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#25

Post by jeffbee » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

vaseem wrote: post #19

bitcuration wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail has. Knock on the wood.

Actually it hasn't. Ever get annoyed whether your email is in primary, updates, promotions or social. Previously I had rules, almost all marketing went to labels or trash. Is it just me or have the rules become inconsistent?

You can disable the categories if you care.

See it is another symptom of the bottom-up product strategy. Categorization was a key feature of Inbox (by Gmail (by Apps (by Google (by Alphabet)))). After they killed Inbox they wrecked the categorization bundling, too.

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#26

Post by MisterBastahrd » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #12

mdorazio wrote: post #6

Having talked about similar questions with friends who work/worked at Google, you need to first ask "How do people get promoted at Google?" The answer to that (by launching new things that get abandoned soon after rather than improving/fixing existing things) answers your question and many others like it.

And there's never another employee saying: wait a second, that's not a good idea ...?

That would require you to pretend that Google listens to devs more than the MBAs they work for. Nothing says "market expertise" like having a sheet of paper that proves you once completed a class project to write a business plan.

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#27

Post by FinanceAnon » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #12

mdorazio wrote: post #6

Having talked about similar questions with friends who work/worked at Google, you need to first ask "How do people get promoted at Google?" The answer to that (by launching new things that get abandoned soon after rather than improving/fixing existing things) answers your question and many others like it.

And there's never another employee saying: wait a second, that's not a good idea ...?

If many managers are onboard with an idea, one engineer saying "no" doesn't have much weight. Also, if you keep saying "no" to things, you might be perceived as "negative" and it might come up in performance reviews. And it's often difficult to predict if an idea will work or not - a lot of it comes down to execution and future politics.

So, as an engineer, it's probably better to jump on the bandwagon with everyone else, and try to get a promotion from it. It's stupid, but it's how it works. You will not progress within a company by saying "no", even if you are right and it stops a bad project.

(I've never worked for google, but did work in a large software corporation)

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#28

Post by rlewkov » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #20

mdorazio wrote: post #6

Having talked about similar questions with friends who work/worked at Google, you need to first ask "How do people get promoted at Google?" The answer to that (by launching new things that get abandoned soon after rather than improving/fixing existing things) answers your question and many others like it.

Everyone at Google says this. It’s not true. Of course it contributes to the problem, but trust me a broken messaging strategy doesn’t naturally arise from Software Engineers trying to get incremental promotions. It comes from two parts of google that are totally broken and don’t know it: 1) Product Management 2) Legal The PMs are running from meeting to meeting trying to please execs and not doing anything that look…

this >> " trying to please execs"

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#29

Post by tylerrobinson » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #20

mdorazio wrote: post #6

Having talked about similar questions with friends who work/worked at Google, you need to first ask "How do people get promoted at Google?" The answer to that (by launching new things that get abandoned soon after rather than improving/fixing existing things) answers your question and many others like it.

Everyone at Google says this. It’s not true. Of course it contributes to the problem, but trust me a broken messaging strategy doesn’t naturally arise from Software Engineers trying to get incremental promotions. It comes from two parts of google that are totally broken and don’t know it: 1) Product Management 2) Legal The PMs are running from meeting to meeting trying to please execs and not doing anything that look…

This is interesting. As a non-Google PM, whenever I face legal or compliance-related pushback on what I think are fair uses of data and reasonable risks, I think to myself, There is no way I’d be facing this constraint at ! But perhaps that’s been a bad assumption.

Re: Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?

#30

Post by enos_feedler » Sun, Sep 19, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #20

mdorazio wrote: post #6

Having talked about similar questions with friends who work/worked at Google, you need to first ask "How do people get promoted at Google?" The answer to that (by launching new things that get abandoned soon after rather than improving/fixing existing things) answers your question and many others like it.

Everyone at Google says this. It’s not true. Of course it contributes to the problem, but trust me a broken messaging strategy doesn’t naturally arise from Software Engineers trying to get incremental promotions. It comes from two parts of google that are totally broken and don’t know it: 1) Product Management 2) Legal The PMs are running from meeting to meeting trying to please execs and not doing anything that look…

There is a Village Global podcast episode where Eric Schmidt is asked this question [1]. He basically says that leadership did not "get" messaging platforms. I think of this as similar to how RIM/blackberry did not "get" the iphone. Nor did Steve Ballmer. It's equivalent in screwup magnitude to Microsoft not getting mobile. This requires massive leadership oversight.

Now, having worked at Google during these times (including the Allo launch where the team went around Google trying to rally the troops on why it was going to work), I can say that the PM structure at Google meant that a ground up led effort to build a competitive messaging platform just wouldn't happen. PMs basically rotate products every few years and nobody really has passion for the thing they are working on it. Its a very mechanical role oriented around features, roadmaps, growth bookkeeping etc. None of these things would yield a competitive messaging platform without a mandate from the top.

Now why was there no mandate from the top? Well, I think that leadership was confident that Google already had what it needed to build messaging into their dominant platforms. Between youtube and Android it felt like that if the competition in messaging were to grow in feature set, it would become more like these platforms (facebook turning into youtube with video, etc). Google could then add messaging and meet them at some point in the future. Schmidt also references youtube as a messaging/social platform in the podcast episode.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/village-globals-ventur...