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The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

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Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#241

Post by Cookingboy »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #227
Cookingboy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there when that happened. The whole rebranding/transition of GTalk/GChat was the result of some political muscle flex by Social and its army of PMs, then after Social lost its favorite child status Allo was born as a result, championed by another army of PMs, and I wonder if Duo had a similar story of birth. >Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat/Google talk from t…

What is a PM? I am getting insight into how google works because this sounds like a bunch of idiotic internal wars between acronym teams instead of focusing on making actual useful products.

Product Manager.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#242

Post by wodenokoto »

smt88 wrote: post #176
jordanthoms wrote: post #164

This is just an utter mess. Google keeps ignoring and trying to kill Hangouts (which should still be called GChat, that was an incredibly stupid rebrand), and building new products instead of investing in the one which actually has some potential. Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat/Google talk from the early Gmail days and kept investing in it. It was great on the ear…

Want to know an even more stupid rebrand? A totally new, half-baked business product called Hangouts Chat.

That is almost exactly what Microsoft did with Skype.

I guess Google really is turning into Microsoft!

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#244

Post by markmark »

shard972 wrote: post #191
a-dub wrote: post #187

So the business product is named like a consumer product (Hangouts) and the consumer product is named like a business product (Messages). I suppose that makes sense in today's upside down world.

Quiet, otherwise google will resolve this by launching two new messaging apps.

You did it, they heard you, Messages is now Youtube Chat and Hangouts has been replaced by a confused looking goldfish.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#245

Post by mrweasel »

distances wrote: post #237
mrweasel wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There no polite way of expressing it: Hangouts Chat is a shitty product. We moved to Chat when Hipchat was closed. Because we’re using G-suite it seem sensible to go with Chat, but everyone hates it. The UI is useless, Google try to be clever about “conversation” and tries to group them together, but now people miss most conversations that happen when they aren’t looking. Notification is broken, you can only get to m…

Our team was in exact same situation. Chat is still missing some features, but I definitely prefer it over HipChat already. Still a compromise in comparison to Flowdock or even Slack, but it gets the job done.

Maybe that personal preference, but the HipChat UI made more sense to me and it was MUCH faster.

Again it's personal, but I feel that Chat is a prototype. The interface is butt ugly, almost like it's something that's just slapped together to the if the backend actually works.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#246

Post by markmark »

ronreiter wrote: post #80

Oh my god - Google really has the worst product management etiquette in the world. It’s not hard. Look around you for what works and what doesn’t and copy that. The post is also confusing and hard to get the bottom line out of it. Just write “we are killing Allo”.

Literally just copy imessage feature for feature, or are they too beholden to carriers to do that?

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#247

Post by nzjrs »

jknz wrote: post #91

FAQ: how start a video call using Google products? Answer: Go to Gmail and send an email to the other party "can you Skype now?". Literally. I had to schedule a video call recently by email. There is simply no formulation to schedule a video call using the name of one of google's products. "Can you Hangout tomorrow?", "Can you Duo tomorrow", "Can you chat with Allo tomorrow?". Nothing would work without confusing the…

If you are a paying gsuite customer then the answer is meet.google.com (formerly hangouts?)

Despite the rebrand, it works remarkably well. Much better than Skype.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#248

Post by chalupa-man »

xte wrote: post #226
mrweasel wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There no polite way of expressing it: Hangouts Chat is a shitty product. We moved to Chat when Hipchat was closed. Because we’re using G-suite it seem sensible to go with Chat, but everyone hates it. The UI is useless, Google try to be clever about “conversation” and tries to group them together, but now people miss most conversations that happen when they aren’t looking. Notification is broken, you can only get to m…

A small sidenote: chats are shitty concept in general. They have had a reason in a past era when voice coms are expensive and limited, they have a reason in terminals to broadcast few messages, no more. For real communication we have letter so in digital world mails or we have phone calls so in digital world VoIP one's extended with eventually video/screen sharing and conferencing capabilities, no more. Discord, Slac…

I couldn't possibly disagree more. Voice comms are _hideously_ inefficient and limited compared to chats and virtually always an inferior option in a group context, in a professional context, and especially for a professional team. They always interrupt one person, and every additional person involved is a decision about how much more time and attention to take and how many more interruptions to make balanced against who to leave out of communication. They are slower for groups over around 4 people, they are more likely to produce misunderstandings, more likely to omit details. They make it harder to refer back to things, they leave less of a window for people to gather their thoughts and word things clearly. They are far more likely to be rushed through because the communication is fully synchronous. They cannot divert into simultaneous side conversations. I struggle to think of situations where I'd rather have a voice call than a text conversation.

If a potential employer told me they relied on VoIP phones over Slack/Discord I would consider that a _major_ point against them.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#249

Post by xte »

piaste wrote: post #238
xte wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small sidenote: chats are shitty concept in general. They have had a reason in a past era when voice coms are expensive and limited, they have a reason in terminals to broadcast few messages, no more. For real communication we have letter so in digital world mails or we have phone calls so in digital world VoIP one's extended with eventually video/screen sharing and conferencing capabilities, no more. Discord, Slac…

> A small sidenote: chats are shitty concept in general. They have had a reason in a past era when voice coms are expensive and limited, they have a reason in terminals to broadcast few messages, no more. Not at all. Voice chat is synchronous - you must stop whatever you're doing and listen or talk in real time. And people nearby will overhear. Chat is asynchronous and private. I can chat and consult a colleague whil…

I still have to find something LESS productive than "chat while doing different things", perhaps even less than having an opposite (same, depending on personal orientation) sex beauty, naked, dancing winking at you...

Many have thought and still think that multitasking and quick things are productive, I see the exact opposite. And we can see it at another level in mean per capita hourly productivity: in the past (so before business model substantially merge around the world) French hourly productivity was the highest in the world, and they are still one of the less-working in term of hours and holidays. USA, Japan and Germany are the opposite, they work far more and have a far lower hourly productivity. To the over extreme try the difference between a lover vs a prostitute...

Open spaces are another TOTALLY unproductive things, born only to push more economic constructions sold as a higher price and facilitate reorganization. The letter also is one of the less productive thing we have if done constantly because any change, if positive, demand time to start pay back, doing constantly means NEVER get paid back, only suffer the change itself.

Re: The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts

#250

Post by jhall1468 »

Cookingboy wrote: post #188
jordanthoms wrote: post #164

This is just an utter mess. Google keeps ignoring and trying to kill Hangouts (which should still be called GChat, that was an incredibly stupid rebrand), and building new products instead of investing in the one which actually has some potential. Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat/Google talk from the early Gmail days and kept investing in it. It was great on the ear…

I was there when that happened. The whole rebranding/transition of GTalk/GChat was the result of some political muscle flex by Social and its army of PMs, then after Social lost its favorite child status Allo was born as a result, championed by another army of PMs, and I wonder if Duo had a similar story of birth. >Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat/Google talk from t…

For the record, project managers aren't the problem. Google having no clue how to hire good product managers is the problem. This is why Amazon doesn't have problems like this, our PM's really are world class. But our obsession with mid-level managers is getting out of hand, so I suppose we're all headed in the same direction.
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