Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 96 posts

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

#71

Post by jeffbee »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #68
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…

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

Once the machine is running and the CPUs are in C0 the marginal cost of scheduling some less-important thread into the otherwise-idle cycles between active bursts of your main service threads is literally zero. Even if you have to wake a core from C1 to run the random thread, the marginal cost is still very close to zero.

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

#73

Post by jakamau »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #56
davidw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't, really. You had a Gmail account, and you could call/chat/sms/video call your contacts from within it.

I think part of the motivation is to provide standalone apps for people that don't have gmail accounts because they're using hotmail/yahoo/some overseas equivalent. Like you say, the old experience was great if you use gmail . Now the new split out messages thing is annoying for gmail users, but not tied to a google account. I think their strategy is to break things up into individual lowest common denominator servic…

But I can't think of a single messaging application google has created that doesn't require a google account to use.

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

#74

Post by enos_feedler »

johnchristopher wrote: post #59
enos_feedler wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud. GCP must compete on the same level as AWS and Azure. You can reverse engineer this by looking at the knobs "the top" has to make something happen. Staffing, money, acquisitions, etc.

So, it's B2b? No B2C or things like Gmail anymore? All I can think of rn is stadia.

Google has won consumer. Adding another consumer app doesn't really change the equation. Google Cloud as a product needs to compete in the market and not die or get sold off. This is a massive growth vector for the company. The main reason it is a different class of product. Paying for usage vs. ads.

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

#75

Post by contravert »

UncleMeat wrote: post #58
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.

This is a meme. Yes, you need to change something about the state of the world but that change absolutely does not need to be launching a product. I work in the Core organization, which builds tooling for the rest of the company. My org within that has among the highest promotion rates (even to high levels) in the company and the primary thing we focus on is the sort of grungy "keep everything functioning" work that…

How many PMs does Core have compared to other PAs?

The problem isn’t really with SWEs but with the entire incentive structure of PMs and the product management chain.

They in turn are able to get more SWE headcount for these unfruitful ventures and end up failing upwards.

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

#76

Post by pedalpete »

I think this was the missed opportunity for Google+. If I recall correctly, when Google launched Google+, everyone we knew and wanted to communicate with was there. They had all the communication infrastructure, and even built it into the app with messaging and hangouts. But it was just mixed in with all the stuff you could do very well on facebook, and that everyone was doing on facebook.

They were on to a good trend with circles, and that was a great differentiator from facebook, but they couldn't really tell us why we should use Google+.

If they had focused down onto a niche in communication, I think they may have been able to crack the code. They would have been able to say "google+ is where everyone you know is, your friends, collegues, and family, it's the place where you can communicate with these groups independently."

Unfortunately, they tried to be all things to everyone, and ended up being nothing to nobody.

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

#78

Post by browningstreet »

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…

Isn’t the second point an argument against fragmentation? Google had an integrated messaging platform, they’ve now abandoned it for multiple platforms. Where was Legal saying no to these new endeavors?

I wish we could rewind most of the web at least ten years. Everything was better then — I enjoyed Gmail, Twitter, Foursquare, Flickr, etc.

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

#79

Post by DantesKite »

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…

> Apple really likes iMessage because consumers seem to be really into iMessage and it seems to create a positive feedback loop to get people to buy iPhones

Well, it would be a bit...naive not to have a phone that can send text messages. You gotta have something.

But it's interesting to note iMessages and Apple Pay work well with each other.

Post reply on HN