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

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

#61

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

zaik wrote: post #60
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean, 'xmpp practically doesn't interoperate with anything'?! Dozens of thousands of xmpp servers interoperate and deliver messages to each other. Or do you expect it to interoperate with Telegram? What next would you expect, UDP ICMP interoperability?

There are in fact transports for Telegram on the XMPP network. https://jabber.hot-chilli.net/server-specifications/#Transpo... https://www.jabbim.com/home.html

I don't consider transports as a kind of interoperability. From Telegram's point of view it's just 2 telegram accounts talking to each other. Wherever else this data is sent is not that important.

Moreover, I came to a conclusion that reliance on transports reinforces the network effect of external services and weakens XMPP's network effect. Do not use them.

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

#62

Post by boulos »

Disclosure: I used to work for Google.

The chat and video call are in the same place again (both on the web and on mobile). The little TV symbol in Chat, invites someone to a video call.

I personally don't love the WeChat-style "make the GMail app into your all in one comms app", but I get that some people do.

The last part is that SMS and phone calls were in a separate universe and mostly focused on Android.

Roughly at the scale of any mega company, it isn't one company: it's several that have the same funding and ease of transfer (people, resources, etc.) but not necessarily coordination. To wit, there are multiple "CEOs" (YouTube, Cloud, etc.) so I really do encourage folks to think of "Google" as like a dozen companies (Search/Ads, YouTube, Cloud, Geo, ...).

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

#63

Post by iamstupidsimple »

jeffbee wrote: post #22
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…

> 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.

Do you have concrete examples?

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

#64

Post by pydry »

setr wrote: post #52
bugBunny wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did not build YouTube by their knowledge, they acquired competition company. They had Google videos back at that time.

Pretty much all innovation large companies do is through acquisition. It’s much faster and risk-free than doing it yourself, from scratch.

They came up with Google Glass and Google Wave by themselves :)

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

#65

Post by jeffbee »

iamstupidsimple wrote: post #63
jeffbee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Do you have concrete examples?

I can think of two right of the top of my head, that were monograph side projects that got launched: Google Keep, and the comment system of Google Docs, which you can think of as maybe another chat system or social network.

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

#66

Post by mikebonnell »

Are you sure you don't have Meet and Chat turned off within Gmail? If I go to Setting -> Chat and Meet within Gmail, I can have chats within Gmail. Meet still does send an invite/give me a link to copy, but I can paste into the chat and away we go in a new tab. (Former Googler)

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

#67

Post by obarthelemy »

I think it's - corporate ADHD. Managers whose project succeed are rewarded away, and the project flounders, until another bright young thing starts again... from scratch because ego

- Google is all about algorithms not users, and messaging is mostly about listening to users and iterating. Google has thrown away... 5 installed bases of users ?

- OEM politics: Google must constantly negotiate what is theirs and what is the OEMs'. OEMs want as much as they can, and that means messaging. It took iMessage becoming such a forte on Apple's side for OEMs to back off on Messaging and allow a single Android platform.

- ditto carriers.

- Apple is a spoilsport. Whatever Google do, on iOS it'll never be default, nor even as integrated as, iMessage. Knowing you won't really have access to the juiciest 50% of the US market is a bummer, even if you still can reach 80% globally.

Who cares anyway ? Android allows one to use whichever app as default, just pick one. I actually removed Messages because it's idiotic and won't display a full text in the Notification, hence cuts off credit card confirmation codes, hence prevents me from buying anything from my phone. Idiots.

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

#68

Post by MichaelZuo »

jeffbee wrote: post #22
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…

‘ because the marginal cost is nothing.’ Who pays the utility bills?

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

#69

Post by navjack27 »

miked85 wrote: post #47
mdasen wrote: post #18

I'd guess that it's a combination of things, but I think what sticks out to me is that a) they probably hit a plateau and felt like they needed to do something to break out of that (and didn't really have a good idea so they started "mixing things up"); and b) messaging seems like a product that everyone wants to solve, but doesn't necessarily offer amazing monetary returns. I loved GChat. It was simple. I could use…

I miss the days of AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GChat. I have lost contact with a lot of people after all of those died off.

Same
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