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Google Pay app will no longer be available

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Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#51
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they could do that, they’d have an iMessage competitor by now. Last Android I used was the Pixel 3 and still couldn’t text from my laptop, something Apple has had for more than a decade.

Windows has Phone Link to do this with Android. It's only been around for ~6 years or so

It’s also a buggy piece of crap. It works for me on one of my two computers, but only after resetting it multiple times. On the other, I’ve never been able to get it to work.

On Apple devices, you just sign in and it all works.

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#52

Google's history with their payment apps/platform is almost as convoluted as their history with message apps/platforms. I swear they have gone back and forth on Android Pay/Google Wallet/Google Pay a half dozen times.

I forgot where it was mentioned [1] that the mess comes from a poor management of international feature list.

In particular, Google wanted it to be successful in India.

But the prior app was designed with USA sensibilities and requirements. Such as, oh, requiring an email and Google account! The thought was that this wouldn't fly in India, and it had to work with just a phone number.

I'm sure there were perverse/crossed incentives on delivery deadlines that lead the leadership team to decide that completely breaking the existing flow/splitting the userbase was the way forward.

[1] Perhaps this Ars Technica article from 2022: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/google-wallet-rolls-...

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#53
post #36
post #28

> Common questions about these changes Does not include a reason for this change or why is it a US only change.

So in the beginning there was Android Pay, which later became Google Pay in the US and Europe. For India, Google launched an app called Tez (and later renamed Google Pay) there which was more adapted for the India market, doing things like phone number identities and UPI integration. This worked so well in India, that they promoted the head of the India app to be in charge of payments everywhere, and so his plan was…

google pay lore master

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#54
post #36
post #28

> Common questions about these changes Does not include a reason for this change or why is it a US only change.

So in the beginning there was Android Pay, which later became Google Pay in the US and Europe. For India, Google launched an app called Tez (and later renamed Google Pay) there which was more adapted for the India market, doing things like phone number identities and UPI integration. This worked so well in India, that they promoted the head of the India app to be in charge of payments everywhere, and so his plan was…

> US & Europe: Google Wallet (fka Google Pay fka Android Pay)

I think you’re missing an fka Google Wallet in that chain. Wikipedia has a family tree under the “History” section for that service (later renamed): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pay_Send

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#55
post #48

The Google Pay Android app is such a mess. I live in Russia, where the app is now useless for its main purpose, but I still use it for loyalty cards. But whenever I travel abroad, and use it for actual payments , it changes its entire UI to some supposedly newer design. And then reverts back to the old one when I return! IIRC it even changes its name and icon. Someone, somewhere, somehow, wrote the code that does tha…

[deleted]

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The banking system in the US is so messed up, and Venmo is so hostile. Here in the UK I can just send people money immediately, and been able to do that for decades.

It's deliberately messed up in order to make more profit if you're a bank. UK has proper electronic funds transfer because the culture accepts government telling big business to do stuff for the public benefit. US political corruption and culture precludes that.

The US has that too, it's just decades late. FedNOW is being rolled out this year

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#57

Strange that Apple can make Apple pay work so well but Google keeps botching it. If nothing else, just copy the product and build what Apple has built, but for Android.

If they could do that, they’d have an iMessage competitor by now. Last Android I used was the Pixel 3 and still couldn’t text from my laptop, something Apple has had for more than a decade.

Android has Telegram for that ;)

As a bonus it's also iPhone compatible.

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#58

So I did some research apparently they have gone full circle now. It started as Google Wallet renamed to Android Pay then renamed to Google Pay then split into Google Pay and Google Wallet and now back to just Google Wallet. Google is a fucking mess lol. I know Sundar has been great for shareholder, but man maybe it's time for a change. A fake post about them getting rid of Gmail next year is going viral on Twitter a…

Google's lack of product sense is embedded in their culture. Consider that they consider this [1] a good interview question, then extrapolate that to the rest of their culture and you can see how we've ended up here. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35545817

Google interviews make a lot of sense if you imagine that on day one it was some CS students with no experience, and maybe a CS professor's influence... so they did what they thought was important.

Then people started training for the interviews.

Now people's egos are propped up on it, and they'd get upset that you were lowering the bar if you tried to change it.

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#59
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on Pixel for several years and used to excuse this stuff. Now, among other things, every time I need to open the app, I inevitably search for Google Pay instead of Wallet. Maybe I'll remember now that this happened. Android Pay -> Google Pay seemed fair, but IIRC, Google Pay -> Google Wallet was just a combo of shipping-the-org-chart and Apple me-too'ing. At the time, they were also leaking that there was go…

> There was no greater force internally than Apple. I swear the only thing 90% of leads _actually_ wanted to get done was something close enough to last year's Apple announcements close enough that they could claim it was the same. I’m sure you’re right but this sounds like a dark joke from outside given how many people I know who stopped using Google products due to the kind of churn Apple avoids. A decade ago my fr…

Let's say:

- you add 80% of what Apple does, every year[^1]

- every year, you put the same clique on this year's Apple project

- that clique is formed by overworking, without complaint, to work around a complete lack of interest in planning / conversation

- only interact with and reward that clique (after all, they're working on the priority project this year, and focus is good)

- rinse, lather, repeat, for 7 years.

You'll find:

- you have 20% of what Apple actually built (80% ^ 7 years)

- your new management layer punches down, because they've always had right of first refusal on any work

- your new management layer also has 0 interest in planning

- your new management layer believes any interest in planning is a form of aggression and/or whining ('thrive in ambiguity!')

- nothing gets done except this year's Apple project

- you don't have anyone to nurture and sustain quality

- any initiative to repair anything requires a new team adjacent to the actual team, a fresh start, and a rebrand

I wish Pixel enough longevity that it gets terraformed[^2].

[^1] I believe that's _very_ generous, my figure is 60%.

[^2] Orgs that aren't as public facing and broken go through an elongated, silent, process where the leads 2 levels up leave in a bunch, then steadily 80% of line management is replaced with people in dress shirts from Motorola/Qualcomm/Google Search, and about 50% of grunts churn. Over 2-3 years.

Re: Google Pay app will no longer be available

#60
post #36
post #28

> Common questions about these changes Does not include a reason for this change or why is it a US only change.

So in the beginning there was Android Pay, which later became Google Pay in the US and Europe. For India, Google launched an app called Tez (and later renamed Google Pay) there which was more adapted for the India market, doing things like phone number identities and UPI integration. This worked so well in India, that they promoted the head of the India app to be in charge of payments everywhere, and so his plan was…

This should be the canonical answer pasted to the top. You forget to mention the head of Tez was actually based in Singapore, though, and Singapore was the one other country that was eligible for the "new" gPay.

What's unclear to me, now as an outside, is whether or not Google is planning to migrate the actually useful features of gPay (p2p payments, payment/expense tracking, loyalty/discounts) to Wallet, or if Wallet is going to only host cards & handle tap-to-pay. I certainly hope for the former, and if they weren't going to that they'd have said so in the email.

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