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Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

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Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#171

Post by simonh »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #167
simonh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I addressed XBox specifically. They wrote off $1.5Bn over the XBox 360 red rings of death issue. It's possible they might have recouped that since, with inflation and interest adjustment, but doubtful. Windows and Azure are the tent poles I was thinking of when I said they had more than one now. I tend to see Windows and Office as fundamentally the same business though, along with development tools, in the same way t…

> I tend to see Windows and Office as fundamentally the same business though, along with development tools, i What? Windows, Office ( cross-platform since recently) and dev tools are totally different cash cows. The ring of death ( = console) isn't even related to the cash cow in consoles. It's the 30% commission on 60€ games. Anti-competitive behavior for not releasing it to other platforms in the past, doesn't mean…

>What? Windows, Office ( cross-platform since recently) and dev tools are totally different cash cows.

Office for Windows was released in the same year as Windows 3.0, supporting all the new core technologies including OLE. Before then MS desktop software products were also-rans. From this point on they dominated, because they had been engineered natively for Windows right alongside the development of Windows itself before any of their competitors even had access to the frameworks and dev tools, or Windows 3.0 to develop and test on. It was part of a single coherent integrated platform strategy for Windows. Now it's grown beyond the platform, but the reason it matters is because of it's privileged position on the Windows platform.

XBox just doesn't matter. It's not big enough. If it died, Microsoft's bottom line would barely shift. Office does matter, we just see it's strategic position differently.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#172

Post by zeusk »

simonh wrote: post #145
zeusk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surface, Dynamics/PowerBI, Research, NeXT (Hololens)

All utterly peripheral, they could wither and die and have no noticeable impact on the bottom line, which is exactly the point I'm making.

Surface is already ~$8B of revenue/year business, not sure how or why you think a business of that size is unnoticeable or nobody would notice that if it were to wither away. Not sure how specific revenue figures I'm allowed to express here publicly but Dynamics and Hololens have also been big cashcows lately.

Research, sure it isn't a direct revenue generating group but their patents portfolio is immense.

Heck, even LinkedIn is $10B/year business now. Maybe you're living under a rock?

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#173

Post by vl »

bsaul wrote: post #131
vl wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your integration into Google ecosystem was not an objective, and this is not a mess at all, it worked as intended - a lot of people got promos! Just imagine if there is a consistent, coherent multi-year strategy, it would be way harder to get a promotion. (I actually worked on one of the mentioned messaging products, it was a shitshow)

without giving names or identifiable details, could you explain what a "shitshow" looks like in those kind of environments ? Is it like having an insane amount of validation, or everchanging requirements, or huge technical constraints, demotivated or unqualified people, etc.. what is it ? i still remember the time when google was at the forefront of web app innovation, and it was probably already quite big. So i'm re…

The name of product in question hypothetically might have started with A and ended with o.

This was last-ditch effort to outwhatsapp WhatsApp. Essentially this is high-risk high-reward project. Google comp is not setup to deal with this. Some people who were early in the game and shipped initial version got their good reviews/promos and quickly left after ship. Rest of the team started a shaky ride trying to find that extra secret feature that will turn this ship around, while metrics were not so good. This lead to worse reviews, management reshuffles, unsteady short-term micromanagement. Which in turn motivated more people to change projects.

The failure of enthusiastic VP of Communications and Photos (I kid you fucking not, he traded Hangouts for Photos, he wanted to shutdown Hangouts, but it turned out a lot of enterprise customers depend on it. So GSuite/GCP said they are going to take over Hangouts, so after some politicking he traded it for Photos). Anyway, he’s failure is to setup and manage this project in such a way when smallest negative result doesn’t lead to a shitshow.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#174

Post by zeusk »

gonehome wrote: post #170
NicoJuicy wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows never failed in desktop OS. And didn't succeed in mobile in the first place. Nadella could quickly release office cross-platform because of work during Ballmer.

Desktop operating systems as a differentiating feature started being a strategic failure because of the web. Ballmer doubled down on Windows at the expense of other stuff. There is a common HN trope that Ballmer was doing everything perfectly and Nadella just continued it. I don’t buy it and neither did the market. (Neither did Microsoft’s board presumably) I think Ballmer’s entire strategic direction was long-term w…

Google was the one pushing web relentlessly and has arguably made computing UX worse for everyone. From bad performance and overdone advertising+tracking to relatively smaller issues like bad accessibility.

They're still trying very hard to put everything on web so Chrome can be what windows used to be.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#175

Post by gonehome »

zeusk wrote: post #174
gonehome wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desktop operating systems as a differentiating feature started being a strategic failure because of the web. Ballmer doubled down on Windows at the expense of other stuff. There is a common HN trope that Ballmer was doing everything perfectly and Nadella just continued it. I don’t buy it and neither did the market. (Neither did Microsoft’s board presumably) I think Ballmer’s entire strategic direction was long-term w…

Google was the one pushing web relentlessly and has arguably made computing UX worse for everyone. From bad performance and overdone advertising+tracking to relatively smaller issues like bad accessibility. They're still trying very hard to put everything on web so Chrome can be what windows used to be.

The web won because it's cross platform, keeps state across everything and puts collaboration among users first. In a lot of ways that's easier for users - it's the closest thing to a universal OS.

This is mostly a failure of desktop operating systems to be interoperable and perhaps most seriously fail to support good network first/collaborative thinking in design. I think they did this in part because they saw being distinct as a way to differentiate themselves, but also because they were created pre-internet before a lot of modern application use cases were really possible or relevant, in the end this made them less competitive and native applications less desirable (in most cases).

I also wish it wasn't that way because the web has a lot of issues, it's slow, creates incentives towards megacorps that run centralized servers and ads, etc.

All this is one of the reasons I'm hopeful Urbit might succeed against all odds - they're rebuilding the OS with network first in mind.

Chrome isn't really comparable to windows because anyone can make a browser that reads the open web standards - while only Microsoft could make an OS that ran windows apps (outside of hacks). This reason is why web won out over native even though native apps have nice performance advantages.

That plus limited amounts of high quality devs can target the web and ship to everyone without having to build multiple native applications for multiple platforms, and again native platforms still haven't solved collab really.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#176

Post by koheripbal »

modeless wrote: post #59
COGlory wrote: post #7

I tried so hard to integrate into the Google ecosystem. I had a Gmail account and Google Talk to start. Eventually an Android phone, on Project Fi, with Hangouts and SMS (so I could send SMS over the internet). I upgraded from Gmail to Inbox. Then when they ditched that for Allo and Duo I tried to switch to those. Then I lost SMS on my computer because it got removed from Hangouts. Then I tried to switch to Google vo…

> Then I lost SMS on my computer because it got removed from Hangouts This isn't true, if you were a Fi subscriber. Fi subscribers were able to keep using Hangouts SMS up until they launched the replacement, Fi support in Messages for Web. There was no time where Web SMS was unsupported. The transition worked reasonably well for me. I do miss the Gmail integration, and it's lame that you can't have RCS enabled if you…

I'm confused. I have Fi and I lost SMS in Hangouts as well as the ability to call in hangouts. Now I need to separately open google voice website to get those features. It's infuriating.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#177

Post by koheripbal »

bscphil wrote: post #74

This mostly skims over two additional issues that add whole additional dimensions to the mess that is Google's messaging services: * How / whether you're allowed to integrate SMS / phone messages with web based chat (what we used to call instant messaging). E.g. can you get your text messages and voicemails on the computer? At some points you could, at some points you couldn't. At one point there was Google Voice, at…

The removal of SMS and voice calling from Hangouts is hands down the most infuriating move.

I'm really just waiting to have a free weekend to de-Google most of my connections to Google.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#178

Post by modeless »

koheripbal wrote: post #176
modeless wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then I lost SMS on my computer because it got removed from Hangouts This isn't true, if you were a Fi subscriber. Fi subscribers were able to keep using Hangouts SMS up until they launched the replacement, Fi support in Messages for Web. There was no time where Web SMS was unsupported. The transition worked reasonably well for me. I do miss the Gmail integration, and it's lame that you can't have RCS enabled if you…

I'm confused. I have Fi and I lost SMS in Hangouts as well as the ability to call in hangouts. Now I need to separately open google voice website to get those features. It's infuriating.

Yes, you lost SMS in Hangouts. But you didn't lose SMS on the web. The deprecation of SMS in Hangouts was delayed (for Fi subscribers only) until the replacement web SMS solution was ready.

I agree, as I mentioned, that the loss of Gmail integration is annoying. But the ability to use SMS on the web, without requiring a connection to your phone at all, is still there. There was no time period where Web SMS wasn't available for Fi subscribers.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#179

Post by zeusk »

gonehome wrote: post #175
zeusk wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was the one pushing web relentlessly and has arguably made computing UX worse for everyone. From bad performance and overdone advertising+tracking to relatively smaller issues like bad accessibility. They're still trying very hard to put everything on web so Chrome can be what windows used to be.

The web won because it's cross platform, keeps state across everything and puts collaboration among users first. In a lot of ways that's easier for users - it's the closest thing to a universal OS. This is mostly a failure of desktop operating systems to be interoperable and perhaps most seriously fail to support good network first/collaborative thinking in design. I think they did this in part because they saw being…

Keeping state across and putting collab first is something native apps can do as well. You don't need a web interface to do that.

I do however agree about the positive cross-platform support. From my experience, which is very limited - it is the decades of backward compat and complexity that makes native development so tiresome. It gets even worse when there are multiple platforms with not much in common.

Thanks, I'll check out Urbit.

And? How many non-Chrome browsers do we have? Even Microsoft gave in to Chromium. Can't wait for Google's next move to tie their protocols deeper into the browser just like they did with Android and playstore services.

This was another eye opener to me, how limited high quality developers are.

Re: Google’s Messaging Mess: A Timeline

#180

Post by zeusk »

simonh wrote: post #171
NicoJuicy wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tend to see Windows and Office as fundamentally the same business though, along with development tools, i What? Windows, Office ( cross-platform since recently) and dev tools are totally different cash cows. The ring of death ( = console) isn't even related to the cash cow in consoles. It's the 30% commission on 60€ games. Anti-competitive behavior for not releasing it to other platforms in the past, doesn't mean…

>What? Windows, Office ( cross-platform since recently) and dev tools are totally different cash cows. Office for Windows was released in the same year as Windows 3.0, supporting all the new core technologies including OLE. Before then MS desktop software products were also-rans. From this point on they dominated, because they had been engineered natively for Windows right alongside the development of Windows itself…

> It was part of a single coherent integrated platform strategy for Windows. Now it's grown beyond the platform, but the reason it matters is because of it's privileged position on the Windows platform.

Just like iOS and Apple apps or Chrome and Google sites?

> XBox just doesn't matter. It's not big enough. If it died, Microsoft's bottom line would barely shift. Office does matter, we just see it's strategic position differently.

xbox was $3.5B (8.5%) of the $41B revenue last quarter - not sure why you think that wouldn't affect bottom line or understand the fact that gaming/xbox is a growth business with a recognizable brand.

To give you a perspective, xbox alone made more than all apple services except for App store (even then the difference isn't that huge).

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