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Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

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Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#111

Post by jalami »

duskwuff wrote: post #71
Frompo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it'd be nice if IM just settled on some interoperable basis. I think there is an eternal need for a new chat app (as each new generation of school children create their first accounts on some service their parents aren't already on, and someone will fill that gap) but I liked the years when I could just add another account to adium and manage it that way. These last years it just been accounts dying off, and th…

> Yeah, it'd be nice if IM just settled on some interoperable basis. And critically: that standard needs to not be XMPP. It's a mess of a protocol that's difficult to implement, and which fails to adequately support many common use cases (e.g, mobile clients, file transfer, and group chats).

I think we should coalesce around a clean modern modular standard that's not XMPP for the perfect world scenario. It's not perfect, but I think you overstate how bad it is. Conversations (a mobile client) allows pictures and (file transfers) and with multi-user-chats MUC (group chats). It takes implementing some XEP's on the client and the server in order for everything to play nice. Implementation is a bear and some XEPs are simply too complicated for their footprint. However, if no one is interested in the open federated standard communication protocol we have, even less are interested in adopting another one we haven't written a line of spec for yet.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#112

Post by dweinus »

inopinatus wrote: post #11
mmastrac wrote: post #6

We had a clean, functional chat app in Gchat that supported XMPP federation, a reasonably good file transfer protocol (IIRC it could be implemented by others) and a even emoji. When Google dropped XMPP, it was pretty much the death knell for interoperability. Facebook followed suit. I don't get the politics that drives the internal chat product development, but it feels like there's a lot of NIH-related "burn it to t…

The removal of XMPP interoperability was the moment I realised "Don't Be Evil" was just another marketing puff, and not actually a statement of values. But I think the termination of Google Wave (which was also federated and built with XMPP) was the real moment Google gave up on team communications.

Personally,I had that moment when Google bought my favorite interoperable chat app so they could kill it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#113

Post by reuven »

When Slack first came out, and everyone got all excited about it, I was quite skeptical. I've been using Skype (and lots of other IM systems) for years; do I really want or need something new?

The answer, for me at least, was yes: Slack is new, different, and better. And nearly all of that difference is because of a vastly better UI, on my desktop, in my browser, and on my phone.

So, did Google Chat work? Sure. Did it do the right things in a narrow technical sense? Absolutely. But without the slick, inviting, easy-to-use UI, it wasn't going to go anywhere. And now that Slack has critical mass, it's hard to imagine Google catching up.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#114

Post by lewisjoe »

A really big fan of Gchat here. What I was amazed at in the software was, how reliably it worked no matter how less your internet bandwidth is.

The desktop GTalk app was tiny, handy and powerful. Back when I couldn't afford a wired internet connection in my home, I used to bridge my phone's 2G data to my computer and when nothing else worked with that tiny bandwidth, GTalk did.

Hangouts - is just sad. It loads visibly delayed. Every conversation you click at, again takes milliseconds/seconds to load. Never had this cognitive delay in GTalk. I miss it.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#115

Post by beagle3 »

partiallypro wrote: post #61
inopinatus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The removal of XMPP interoperability was the moment I realised "Don't Be Evil" was just another marketing puff, and not actually a statement of values. But I think the termination of Google Wave (which was also federated and built with XMPP) was the real moment Google gave up on team communications.

I knew Google was "evil" long before then, but the biggest middle finger to me as a customer was dropping ActiveSync. Seriously, try to get Outlook to work with Gmail, it's a totally nightmare. Absolutely unnecessary in its complexity to get it to work (lots of buried settings in Gmail, lots of blocking your sign-ins, Calendar syncs only work one way.) I deplore Google Apps for Business, just a complete nightmare, un…

That's not much different than dropping xmpp federation: Microsoft was charging them for the patent license on ActiveSync, AND attacking android at the same time. So Google dropped ActiveSync at the point in time when it hurt Microsoft most - WP8 release. Microsoft's response was "no no no, don't pay for ActiveSync but please keep it up"

Historically, Google drops features when they don't make financial sense or when they give leverage/advantage to competitors.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#116

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #47
Frompo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, people started using msn instead of gchat because those chats weren't on xmpp? Why would gchat have as many users as facebook anyway? It's not like gmail was a community like facebook was. MSN meanwhile basically started as a chat client, there where ads for it on tv in Sweden...

People on MSN could chat with people on GChat, but people on GChat couldn't chat with people on MSN. Since a critical feature of a messaging app is "my friends are on it", that gave MSN/FB/AIM a huge advantage over GChat, and had they not turned off XMPP integration, they would have bled off users until it was only used by small pockets of people, all of whom were on GChat (eg. Googlers).

[deleted]

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#117

Post by leni536 »

mmastrac wrote: post #6

We had a clean, functional chat app in Gchat that supported XMPP federation, a reasonably good file transfer protocol (IIRC it could be implemented by others) and a even emoji. When Google dropped XMPP, it was pretty much the death knell for interoperability. Facebook followed suit. I don't get the politics that drives the internal chat product development, but it feels like there's a lot of NIH-related "burn it to t…

> When Google dropped XMPP

AFAIK they only dropped federation and support, but I still can connect with any XMPP client.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#118

Post by moreira »

dweinus wrote: post #112
inopinatus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The removal of XMPP interoperability was the moment I realised "Don't Be Evil" was just another marketing puff, and not actually a statement of values. But I think the termination of Google Wave (which was also federated and built with XMPP) was the real moment Google gave up on team communications.

Personally,I had that moment when Google bought my favorite interoperable chat app so they could kill it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo

YES! Meebo was the best. I used to use it on both the web and mobile, all the time. I was extremely disappointed when Google bought them and shut them down just like that.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#119

Post by voltagex_ »

reitanqild wrote: post #89
codemac wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really really like the ideas of Matrix, but the problem is none of my friends are on it. Build a whatsapp bridge for matrix? I mean, it's built for the exact case where people aren't "on" it.

The problem is Whatsapp is actively hostile to any kind of attempts to creating 3rd party clients or APIs.

Exactly, and this is the problem with the state of messaging in 2016. The companies have built their walled gardens and are now actively defending them against "outsiders". It's to the point where I've considered buying an iDevice just to communicate with a few friends on iMessage.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#120

Post by JupiterMoon »

zanny wrote: post #58
weisser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a system with an open specification that checks all the boxes in terms of features (not quite end-to-end encryption yet, but it's being worked on) and is not controlled by a company Half of the people reading tune out very quickly around this point. Most people want something that solves 80% of their problems with 20% reduction in headaches.

The only major problem I still have with Vector is that despite Matrix the protocol specifying ways to register and authenticate accounts using various web apis like oauth[1] Vector is always pushed as the premium Matrix webclient but it doesn't support anything but username / password. You would be amazed how many people simply refuse to create new username / password pairs in 2016. And its a good thing. We should b…

We are pretty much past needing to remember them. Checkout password managers. There are lots of options in that space these days.
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