As more and more of these get GPlused, the more repuslive they are become. Among all the IM apps out there, I think hangouts sucks the most. More than the fb messenger. 2-3 years back, a lot of people I knew were using gtalk. Infact that was the default IM. We use watsapp now, or fb in case we don't have a number, but not hangouts. This massive transition clearly happened during the gtalk to hangouts change and I don't think I will go back unless the experience becomes better.
Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
51–60 of 87 posts
Re: Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
#52The most useful feature of Google Voice to me is the voicemail transcription. It's not perfect, but it's good enough it saves me from having to listen to the voicemail about 90% of the time.
There are plenty of other voip/call forwarding services, but are there any that duplicate that functionality?
Re: Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
#53They also removed the last bit of Jabber interoperability in the new Google Mail chat/hangouts frontend. I used to be able to talk to my Jabber frieds on both Android and Gmail/Web. They dropped federation on Android with the move to Hangouts, and -- unsurprisingly -- they're now doing the same for Gmail/Web as it's moving to Hangouts. I'm eyeing TextSecure as a replacement IM tool. Sort of hoping the TextSecure desk…
Aaand no federation with TextSecure either.. :/
Re: Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
#54For people like me who follow this space closely, this is not news. And to be fair, the article doesn't really claim it as news. The Google Voice team was rolled into the Hangouts team long ago. The only thing they haven't done is roll the Google Voice app's functionality into the Hangouts app.
I don't understand why you'd roll all of your products into something that has a terrible user experience. I'm a long-time Google/Android user, and its just painful using Hangouts. I disabled it and switched to Telegram.
A number of security professionals have expressed serious concern about Telegram, including Moxie Marlinspike [0] [1] and Geoffroy Couprie [2].
It's really painful to see Telegram gaining popularity, when it has such glaring errors.
You should instead use OTR on Jabber (ChatSecure [3]), or TextSecure [4] (which now has an Internet delivery mechanism).
[0]: http://thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6936539
[2]: http://unhandledexpression.com/2013/12/17/telegram-stand-bac...
[4]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcri...
Re: Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
#55Well, this kind of sucks. I use a Google Voice number that is associated with a Gmail account that I do not use for any other purpose (Hangouts/Talk or otherwise). It doesn't even have a Google+ account associated with it. It's nice to have single number that can ring all my lines. If/when this is killed, what's the alternative? (Article appears to be down/inaccessible for me).
Just integrate with Google+ and then don't use Google+? I don't use Google+, but at some point I integrated with it. It doesn't affect me at all.
You can't brag about it on HN.
Re: Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
#56I've been using Voice as my primary number since the GrandCentral days. They better not fuck that up too.
Edit: For those who say "it's free don't complain" I reply: "Then Google should bill me. I'll pay."
Re: Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
#57I just really hate the concept of them somewhat "making" you have a G+ account. Good for a business perspective I guess, but limits consumers. I have no desire to create a G+ account and I'm somewhat annoyed that it seems to be somewhat mandatory for more and more of Google's' Services.
Re: Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
#58While all of this consolidation of their myriad overlapping services and products into a small suite of core services that offer strong featuresets makes sense, I'm constantly astonished how bad they've done at it. Bombarding users with annoying questions about Plus (and the questions are annoying regardless of your opinions on Plus - they never should've even tried to make Plus optional, just enable it but keep it out of the freaking way) and screwing up these transitions... does anybody like any of these new Google apps? And these new apps are increasingly awful or nonexistent outside of Android/Chrome. Can you even send a message through hangouts without installing the browser plug-in? Do they even have a browser-version of Currents?
Re: Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
#59Hey Google I don't want everything in Google+
Your comment reminds me of recent article on HN, which I can't find at the moment. The jest of the entry was that G+ isn't for the customer, it's for google to organize its data on you.
Here is another article by The Guardian that touches on a similar sentiment. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/04/googl...
Re: Google to reportedly kill Voice, integrate it into Hangouts
#60For some reason the site isn't loading for me. If they want to integrate the features of Voice into Hangouts then that's great. The Voice app has been utterly neglected for years. If they want to kill all the Voice features, then I'll be very disappointed.
Do you have HTTPS Everywhere installed? I had to disabled it for pcworld.com before the article would load.