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Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

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Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#421

Post by VintageCool »

WorldMaker wrote: post #256
mindcrime wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and it was absolutely not up to the task. In what way? The chief complaint I've heard about XMPP over the last couple of years is about excessive power consumption on mobile. And my own experience is that those concerns are highly over-stated.

My anecdotal experience is also that all the purpose built closed protocols like Facebook Messenger and Slack both seem to use way more power consumption "in idle" (no message traffic) than I recall ever dealing with for an XMPP client... I've never seen users actually complain directly about an app's "excessive power consumption". Can we all admit that one has always been an excuse? The only other complaint I've hea…

Facebook Messenger used to be an egregious offender here and chewed through battery life. I uninstalled it two years ago and that helped my phone's battery life noticeably.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#422

Post by lucaspiller »

colordrops wrote: post #146
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is the point we need legislation to require that IM services with above X users in the relevant jurisdiction must provide a full, open, protocol and enable interoperation via the published protocol? That's the only way I see the companies involved would move to enable cross-platform communications? Aside: >It's a wonder we can send e-mails between many servers. I have a shared account on a small ISP, Mic…

I'm not a big fan of legislating technical standards, but in this case I think I could support it. IM has become a fundamental communication mechanism. Imagine how held back society would be if we had 50 different voice standards rather than the singular phone system we have now. IM needs to be forcefully standardized.

Except we still do have many different standards for the phone system. As an example the main codecs used for encoding voice today are μ-law (North America), A-law (Europe), GSM (2G/3G), AMR (3G/4G), iLBC (VoIP), G.729 (VoIP).

That is just for voice, now imagine you are a phone company and want to send a call to another phone company. There must be so many different things you need to cooperate on to make it happen - billing, switching, physical connections, numbering, codecs, etc. Yes the actual protocols may be standardised, but the main part is cooperation.

It's not standards we need, it's companies that are willing to cooperate and work together. None of the big tech companies want to do that now though. Everyone wants their own walled garden so they can say they have more users that X competitor.

(I'd argue that XMPP is good enough, or with a few extensions could be made good enough, for a company who really wants to push open IM)

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#424

Post by GauntletWizard »

wtbob wrote: post #385
GauntletWizard wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Surely the right answer would have been to enable users to report spam invites, and to kill spam-sending domains. Kinda like what is already done for email. Could probably repurpose a lot of the existing infrastructure.

It was done. Domains are cheap. User patience is not.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#425

Post by vidyesh »

cptskippy wrote: post #195
TorKlingberg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 pe…

>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.

I agree 100%, one of the only reasons why I prefer using Gchat over Hangouts and now I don't know what. Just because my Gmail is open 24x7 doesn't mean I am available to chat all the time to everyone.

Maybe I am wrong but I think this comes for people like you and me for whom desktop/PC is the primary utility over smartphone.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#426

Post by vidyesh »

hkdobrev wrote: post #380

OK, Google Talk was a dead man walking for some time now. Even if it's not a nice decision for open standards at least they made a final decision whether they are either improving it or killing it. However, Google have completely lost their mind with messengers. GTalk, Hangouts, Messages, Messenger, Allo, Duo, Chat, Meet. Some available only on mobile. Some supporting SMS, some working only with SMS. Allo having G as…

>G assistant is only with voice on their pixel phone.

What do you mean? Google Assistant is now available for almost every Android device, it has replaced Google Now and can be invoked like you invoked Google Now before.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#427

Post by Markoff »

eachro wrote: post #60

At this point I have no idea which Google chat client is which. A few years ago I remember having Google Talk on my android phone. Then after some random update the application disappeared from my phone and was replaced with hangouts. Now is Google Talk the same as GChat? Was Hangouts anything more than just a new branding for Google Talk? I have no idea. And what's up with this Google Allo thing? Again, it seems lik…

just curious, why would anyone outside China use censoring spyware like Wechat?

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#428

Post by nojvek »

Google wants to be like Apple. Lean and mean but it's got a big problem.

They want to release and try new things but also still be focused on the big money makers.

That means expect a lot of crap from Google like wave, allo, duo, buzz etc. Some hotshot inside Google wants a promo and pushes new products like popcorn.

But Google management needs to show $$$ so they need to focus on the big cows: search & ads.

In Steve Jobs era a ton of shit would never even see the light of day.

Google literally has so much money and resources that it actually hurts them innovating.

Their best strategy is to acquire products with good market fit and scale the shit out of them.

Re: Google Talk Is Being Discontinued

#430

Post by Markoff »

Pxtl wrote: post #265

Losing SMS from Hangouts is the bigger deal for me. I liked having one app on the home screen for voip and text and sms and videochat. It was simple and clean. Splitting it into 3 is a terrible user experience. I get the Unix philosophy of lots of small tools applying here, but the Unix has the shell to tie them together. If Google made their Contacts app work as a hub - every chat system logs their history for a giv…

well you can have all of it with Skype (Lite) or Signal (no dialer though), which are actually only two messaging apps i use since i left Facebook Lite and don't wanna use other Facebook product called WhatsApp, I am fine being reachable on Skype, email, SMS and Signal, I think enough options for other people
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