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Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

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Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#251

Post by ocdtrekkie »

aiiane wrote: post #237
jhgg wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it's not open sourced, you should check out discord ( https://discordapp.com/ ). Although our niche is gamers, lots of people use Discord for tons of other things. We've got all those things except search (but we're working on it!) (disclosure: i work there)

It'd be nice if you all had a stronger story for how you're going to stay afloat long term. "Stickers, lol" isn't very much of one.

Exactly, a bunch of friends tried to move a chatroom from Skype to Discord, and I blew them off, because I didn't want to move my communication to an app from a company just hoping to get bought out by Twitch probably and shut down within a year. A closed source service with no business model isn't something anyone should even try, much less use.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#252

Post by ocdtrekkie »

nnain wrote: post #35

Gchat was (and is) wonderful -- minimal and elegant. I never understood why Google was so hell bent upon trying to move the users from Gchat to Hangout. They would have enough data to know the number of times users clicked 'no' to moving to the new interface! Hangout might work fine, but I don't like the brand. A "GChat" mobile App would have signified a fast minimal interface to me. "Hangout" just sounds like such a…

I still click that button regularly. The "Google Talk" Gmail plugin still works better than the "Google Hangouts" one.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#253

Post by kyrra »

chris_wot wrote: post #130
lqdc13 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that username/password is still the only choice for privacy minded people.

Google Talk did have XMPP functionality, which allowed for SASL. [1] But of course, they killed this off because they wanted to dominate chat and messaging with their own proprietary protocol. If they had not followed this strategy they would be killing in this market, even whilst supporting XMPP Federation. But they have chosen to release multiple proprietary products, so they aren't the lead in the market. Silly of…

They killed it because Microsoft was leaching contact data from them without giving back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11794776

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#254

Post by nine_k »

dredmorbius wrote: post #204
mike_hearn wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to encounter a chat network that uses targeted advertising, so you're well off into the realm of conspiracy theories there. Chat networks are all moving to the use of phone numbers because users mobile phonebooks are a vendor neutral, open access social network of high value contacts that almost everyone has and for which there are simple APIs available. Phone numbers have other advantages. They are diffic…

Phones are dying. Too inconvenient, too much spam, pants vendors, pervasive surveillance, pants call and voice quality, and a phone is too small for a tablet. It's got a few years yet, but POTS and mobile are already legacy, they just don't know it yet.

I don't see any replacement for a pocket-size, one-hand-operated device. Using a table while walking down a street or riding a subway car is pretty inconvenient at best.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#255

Post by ronreiter »

I made a mock that could explain how Google can still compete with Slack today. What do you think?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/55nr2tggbu9rw4q/slackingoogle.png?...

(If there's anyone from Google here that likes the idea then drop me a line at ron.reiter@gmail.com)

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#256

Post by ex3ndr »

aftbit wrote: post #46

Who is building the open-source Slack? Four things are needed: 1. Good support for multiple active clients, including mobile. If I see a message on desktop, I shouldn't get notified on mobile. If I read on one client, when I reconnect on another, it should show me the convo starting where I left off. Etc etc. 2. Eternal history (ideally configurable by users/channels) with decent search. 3. A few basic bells-and-whis…

Try us: https://actor.im

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#257

Post by gcr »

Perceptes wrote: post #53

Just about every week now there is a top story on HN about the disastrous state of interoperable messaging in the digital world. Every time it comes up, I implore people to look into Matrix ( https://matrix.org ), a system with an open specification that checks all the boxes in terms of features (not quite end-to-end encryption yet, but it's being worked on) and is not controlled by a company. I really hope to see it…

How is the feature set any different than XMPP?

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#259

Post by gcr »

marvy wrote: post #249
Bromskloss wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha! I just tried Vector on iOS and apparently moved about in such a way that I accidentally triggered the greatest notification message: > You seem to be shaking the phone in frustration. Would you like to submit a bug report?

Wow. I am truly impressed.

A lot of companies use the "shake the phone hard" as a way of sending feedback.

Re: Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know

#260

Post by MildlySerious »

ronnier wrote: post #16

To this day, ICQ is still the best messenger I've used.

May I ask what made it the best messenger for you? I hated every second I spent on ICQ. The ad-infested client, the fact that if someone else thought 24px purple comic-sans was their identity, I would have to deal with it..

The only thing that I actually liked was that by pressing backspace on an Emoji it was converted back to its text version.

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