171–180 of 504 posts
For a second I thought they were discontinuing Google voice and almost panicked as my main number is my Google voice number. Actually, has anyone migrated away from Google voice to a better service ? I would be willing to pay a little bit.
At this point I have no idea which Google chat client is which. A few years ago I remember having Google Talk on my android phone. Then after some random update the application disappeared from my phone and was replaced with hangouts. Now is Google Talk the same as GChat? Was Hangouts anything more than just a new branding for Google Talk? I have no idea. And what's up with this Google Allo thing? Again, it seems lik…
If you currently use Hangouts for your Google Voice communication, there’s no need to change to the new apps, but you might want to try them out as we continue to bring new improvements.
W.T.F? Don't bring me into your internal office politics...
Then there's Allo because with all the above they made it too complicated to chat with someone or something. Also Duo, because video calling was completely missing from the offerings above (it wasn't).
This blog post mentions following messenger technologies (Google has even more not mentioned here): - Google Talk - Hangouts Meet - Hangouts Chat - Android Messages (something new, never heard of it) (And non-google messenger technologies: SMS, RCS). How user is supposed to navigate all these? Given that all these things are inferior to even Facebook and is ICQ-grade.
If I ask someone what app or service they used to send me a message I didn't see, they can't really tell me.
Increasingly they don't even know if they sent a text message or something else entirely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just failed. Google betrayed XMPP. You can blame Eric Schmidt for it. He gave some lame speech about how other instant messaging services aren't playing fair, so Google should also become a walled garden. And that was it. They made Hangouts and stopped caring about federated IM idea. It's a wonder we can send e-mails between many servers. Imagine someone like Eric Schmidt driving it. We'd be stuck with incompatib…
Isn't Hangouts mainly some kind of video chat? I've never used it because I'm not interested in video chat ...
Here's what I don't get about Google. A few years ago, they were one of the only players in the IM game, alongside MSN, AOL IM, ICQ... have you heard about any of these lately? Of course not, they're all dead. Talk was built on top of XMPP, an open protocol, which helped its popularity as third party clients could connect to it. Talk was also built in to gmail, and at the time that was revolutionary: A fast and light…
By the time google talk came around, third party clients were easily connecting to all the other major IM services. I don't think the open protocol made any difference to its popularity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have already mail email incompatible. They haven't changed protocol but best of luck if you run your own email server.
The world made it impossible to roll your own server, not Google. The proliferation of spammers in email has necessitated a cottage industry of security and filtering and all manner of mechanisms, automated and otherwise, to deal with the avalanche of bullshit streaming through that protocol. Google's the blame party for a lot of things, but not the loss of email freedom.
Here is today' world work flow: 1. Buy a domain
2. Have to use Google because your mail will end up in spam with any provider (unless it's outlook or some special provider).
This blog post mentions following messenger technologies (Google has even more not mentioned here): - Google Talk - Hangouts Meet - Hangouts Chat - Android Messages (something new, never heard of it) (And non-google messenger technologies: SMS, RCS). How user is supposed to navigate all these? Given that all these things are inferior to even Facebook and is ICQ-grade.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If ever there was a software example of killing the goose with the golden eggs. Imagine if they thought like that about email?
Google Wave was supposed to replace email. But actually they replaced email with gmail. Now you can't send email from your own server because it will be blacklisted on gmail by default and noone on gmail will receive these emails. So you have to use "cloud email providers". On Android they changed "Email" client to "Gmail" client.
At this point I have no idea which Google chat client is which. A few years ago I remember having Google Talk on my android phone. Then after some random update the application disappeared from my phone and was replaced with hangouts. Now is Google Talk the same as GChat? Was Hangouts anything more than just a new branding for Google Talk? I have no idea. And what's up with this Google Allo thing? Again, it seems lik…
Here's what I don't get about Google. A few years ago, they were one of the only players in the IM game, alongside MSN, AOL IM, ICQ... have you heard about any of these lately? Of course not, they're all dead. Talk was built on top of XMPP, an open protocol, which helped its popularity as third party clients could connect to it. Talk was also built in to gmail, and at the time that was revolutionary: A fast and light…
Don't forget Allo in the mix, from Google, that could replace Hangouts! Take a product people use, and replace it with something people don't, then replace that with something that people also don't use.
It was actually fascinating, because it was among the most viscerally negative reactions I've ever had to a piece of software.
It reminded me of that trick where you play back someone's speech to them in a very slight delay and it becomes very difficult for them to speak, only in this case with my inner monologue while trying to participate in a conversation.
Really impressively disturbing and uncomfortable. An amazing feat, but not something I will ever use.