Google Plans New, Smarter Messaging App • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Plans New, Smarter Messaging App

#21

Post by hobarrera » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

lindseya wrote: post #19

I was surprised to read that "Google has struggled to create such network effects with both Hangouts and Messenger." At my university, all the student groups that I have worked on use Google docs, Messenger, and Hangouts to coordinate. We don't use Messenger a lot, only when we are online working on a document together, but we do use Hangouts weekly. For us, Google is for group productivity (sort of like Slack), but…

For me, this article is literally the first time I've ever heard of "Google Messenger".

A few other students at my university use Hangouts and Docs, but generally everything is done via email and github.

Re: Google Plans New, Smarter Messaging App

#22

Post by joshstrange » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

s3r3nity wrote: post #12

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in my immediate family, as well as my colleagues and my immediate friends have iPhones. Network effects I guess. I only have two or three friends without iPhones. We simply text or call back and forth.

This -- I recently switched to Android thinking "iPhones are luxury phones. Surely a bunch of my friends use Android." Was immediately known as "Green Bubbles" guys for a few weeks by family and friends.

Oh yes, you "green bubble" people. I pretty much only talk to them on FB and if we have to talk in a group I'll use a FB group. I'm no fan of facebook but messenger blows SMS out of the water and at least brings everyone up to the same level. Just 1 sms-only user in an iMessage group and you are back to the dark ages it feels like... No offense to android users it's just a PITA to have to revert to SMS when 90% of the people in the group have iOS/iMessage.

Re: Google Plans New, Smarter Messaging App

#23

Post by joshstrange » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 8:10 PM UTC

orange_county wrote: post #13

"Users will be able to text friends or a chatbot, which will scour the Web and other sources for information to answer a question" So instead of typing this in google, you would send a message to a chatbot? I always found chat bots gimmicky, just like Siri. It's great as a novelty, nothing else..

Siri is only good for things like "How many X in a Y" (Like units of measurement), "Remind me to do X at Y", and "Set an alarm/times for X". Past that I've found it to be almost useless.

Re: Google Plans New, Smarter Messaging App

#24

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Dec 23, 2015, 8:14 PM UTC

orange_county wrote: post #13

"Users will be able to text friends or a chatbot, which will scour the Web and other sources for information to answer a question" So instead of typing this in google, you would send a message to a chatbot? I always found chat bots gimmicky, just like Siri. It's great as a novelty, nothing else..

> So instead of typing this in google, you would send a message to a chatbot?

How is typing something in Google different than sending it to a bot, other than currently you use different input boxes to do it? To me, this sounds like just unifying the messaging and search interfaces into one DWIM interface, and isn't really surprising given how much Google has been trying to merge everything into a shared DWIM interface.

Re: Google Plans New, Smarter Messaging App

#25

Post by unsignedint » Thu, Dec 24, 2015, 11:36 AM UTC

lindseya wrote: post #19

I was surprised to read that "Google has struggled to create such network effects with both Hangouts and Messenger." At my university, all the student groups that I have worked on use Google docs, Messenger, and Hangouts to coordinate. We don't use Messenger a lot, only when we are online working on a document together, but we do use Hangouts weekly. For us, Google is for group productivity (sort of like Slack), but…

From the standpoint of someone who had to ask people to use common messenger among a team of people with varying team in the field operation at an event, biggest issue I have seen with Google Hangouts (I guess this also applies to Facebook in that respect as well) is that there seems to be a bit of reluctance from people when they are required signing up to more "blanket" service, in this case, Google.

I guess for some who do not use other Google services (especially when they don't use Gmail, YouTube, etc.) either don't want set up or show high resistance in setting up a new account with Google.

Some privacy concern aside, many of those integrated services works great especially when they are used effectively, but I think the flip side is that those services tend to be "too heavy" for some people who just want to use it as a messenger and nothing else. (Actually, I wish they had an option like that.)