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Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

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Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#191

Post by LyndsySimon »

LTom wrote: post #145

I’m getting really fed up with Google. Yet another time when they nudge me towards using a service, only to retire it a while later. A separate app for SMS again , just when I’m comfortable with centralizing it in Hangouts. And Allo and Hangouts aren’t compatible, right? Every time I jump on Google’s newest app bandwagon it seems to end up being another ephemeral thing.

This may be a little dramatic, but I feel like I have to say it.

Everything is ephemeral.

Google's problem is that they don't keep services around long enough nor do they plan a reasonable migration strategy for when they shutter them.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#192

Post by Nav_Panel »

yitchelle wrote: post #75
startupdiscuss wrote: post #22

I just had an image of myself posting the headline: "Google discontinues Gmail and Search" as a way to kickstart a conversation about our reliance on services, and whether we can blame companies for not subsidizing services we like and so on. But then I realized it would just go sideways into a discussion about click bait and appropriate headlines, so I am posting it as a comment.

When Google Talk is discontinued, folks will gravitate to the next IM message like WhatsApp, Facebook messenger or even Twitter DM. Gmail, well there are other client to use. Search, umm, what can we do here? DuckGoGo?

Twitter DM is bad. Messages don't appear "immediately" so you often end up with overlapping streams of conversation. The Android app's DM interface is so slow (it freezes for a long half-second every other word) that it's almost impossible to use (thankfully the mobile site works well enough). The best tactic if you're forced to use Twitter DM for an extended or even semi-real-time conversation is to move to a different IM client.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#193

Post by MaxLeiter »

scrollaway wrote: post #27

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…

Regarding IRC, how do you feel about ircv3 [1]?

[1] http://ircv3.org

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#194

Post by vvanders »

scrollaway wrote: post #27

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…

Huge fan of Matrix, really hope it takes off. They've got the right idea and it plugs into other things like IRC very cleanly.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#195

Post by cptskippy »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #151
lotso wrote: post #7

I still use Gchat over Hangouts because it's nice seeing my contacts list sorted by who is online, as opposed being ordered by recency of last communication. So many of my Gchat conversations have started because of the online status. I've hit up friends that I haven't talked to in over a year and had really great, synchronous, conversations because of it.

"online" as a concept has become a bit meaningless with mobile clients.

This is just the further erosion of manners, respect, and privacy that is so pervasive these days. No one is ever allowed any down time, we're always online and anytime is a good time to talk. To me this feels like a bad thing but I guess others don't see it that way.

People use to never call you after 9pm or during dinner time. If your phone rang during a meal you didn't answer it. If you didn't want to chat with people you didn't log into your IM client, if you wanted to chat with someone specifically there was a first class UI element for setting your status so you could tell others to leave you alone. Email and SMS were black holes where you only knew if your message was received via a response.

Now everyone is always online and it's never unacceptable to call, text, or IM someone. Read receipts are standard so you know if someone got your message. If someone's phone rings while you're eating, you're lucky if they apologize before answering, and you've won the lottery if they excuse themselves from the table.

It seems like we're all just sitting around waiting for an interruption to distract us from the life in front of us.

Idk... you damn kids need to get off my lawn.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#196

Post by rhapsodic »

kuschku wrote: post #98
throwaway6556 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop spreading FUD. I've been running my own email server for a year without delivery issues to Gmail or Outlook/Office 365. Just make sure your VPS IP is not blacklisted, and play the DKIM/etc game. You'll be fine.

It’s not that easy. I’ve had proper DKIM, proper SPF, my IP wasn’t blacklisted anywhere. But I still ended up in Spam. So I had to send for about a year emails to friends every few days, replicating our discussions on WhatsApp etc (so they’d have organic content), and I’d ask them to mark them as "not spam". Now I end up in their normal Inbox. EDIT: Why the downvotes? Please comment instead what you think is wrong –…

> EDIT: Why the downvotes? Please comment instead what you think is wrong – or how else you think I should get my personal domain trusted enough?

I don't understand the downvotes either. So I upvoted your comment to counteract them.

I've found myself doing that more and more lately. I'll upvote a comment I disagree with if it was made politely and in good faith, and it appears to be getting downvoted unfairly.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#197

Post by jldugger »

hunter2_ wrote: post #159
FussyZeus wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know a whole lot about XMPP, but since it's federated, wouldn't it have the same avalanche? It seems like your choices are to use something interoperable and get spammed, or use a walled garden and you don't get spammed because the gardener has pitchforks.

> I don't know a whole lot about XMPP, but since it's federated, wouldn't it have the same avalanche?

It absolutely did. Everyone decrying how XMPP federation was killed conveniently forgets how useful it was to spammers.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#198

Post by zekevermillion »

radiorental wrote: post #17
zekevermillion wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, Google owes me $50 for my obihai router I bought solely for free google integration. This is the problem with building anything on top of Gsuite -- they will screw you over at a random moment and deprecate whatever service you may have been relying on.

I think this relates to apps that utilise gtalk. Obihai is integrated with gVoice. Is there something I'm missing?

OK, if they still support XMPP for Gvoice then I am an idiot and I take back my comment. There was a threat awhile back that they would remove XMPP support for Gvoice (and thus I would have to pay for a service to use with my obihai). But that seemed to have gone on the back burner for awhile.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#199

Post by ereyes01 »

Boy, do I regret giving so many people my GV number and using it as a main phone number...

They are also removing Hangouts' SMS integration, BUT:

> Note: This change does not impact Google Voice users who may continue to use Hangouts for their Google Voice SMS.

That doesn't really make me feel great, it's only a matter of time before it changes again, and I'm quite sure the experience of staying in Hangouts will be awful in the meantime. This whole SMS + Hangouts + GV situation is such a clusterfuck, yet I feel a bit trapped in this ecosystem right now due to the stickiness of a phone number that family already remembers, and numerous business cards I've handed out.

I know they recently polished up the old GV app, but the FB Messenger + Whatsapp ecosystem looks so much nicer now... I wish I can just somehow hand them my GV number and leave this Google mess behind... or somehow redirect everyone to my carrier number.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#200

Post by camus2 »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #183
shmerl wrote: post #35

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…

It was a product driven decision. The number of active federations was absolutely tiny and the number of messages sent over those links even tinier. The amount of XMPP spam was catastrophic, and for most users the only knowledge they'd ever have of XMPP was when they got a friend request from buy.herbal.viagra@cheap-online-meds.com. XMPP federation was a great idea, but it never had adoption, and at some point Google…

> XMPP federation was a great idea, but it never had adoption,

And your alternative @ google was yet another closed source protocol that doesn't work with any other closed source protocol(obviously, because they are closed source). Now imagine if the internet worked that way, Google wouldn't be where it is today.

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