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Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

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Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#91

Google's main problem is that they only promote people for releasing new products. So all the engineers and product people are highly incentive to only work on new launches. Doesn't even matter what it is. So now they end up with all these garbage products laying around, none of which make them any money.

They also only care about stupid metrics. One google dev said they got given an old project and they found it was full of bugs and reporting loads of bad info so the dev added a bunch of tests that picked up on the bugs and bad data and then they were denied the promotion because the errors logged from the program they were working on went up since they started working on it.

this kind of nonsense will be the death of google

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#92
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic you pick Google Maps as the one product that "gets it right". Did you hear about the recent pricing scandal? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17570029

I didn't really read that as much of a scandal. Just that they were increasing prices and people got upset.

I'm upset by this because I just got burned by it last week. I needed their geocoding API for a project at work. I didn't realize I was looking at their old pricing page at first, and came to the conclusion it would cost us about $65 a month. Once I realized my mistake, I did the math again and it came to over $700 a month, which couldn't be justified for the use case. So I've spent the last week implementing the functionality I needed myself. While I agree it's not a 'scandal', it's extremely frustrating and baffling to me.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#93

Hangouts and now this? Their track-record is one of the reasons I don’t adopt personally or recommenced new Google services to friends and family.

People use Hangouts. No one I know has ever used Allo. It hasn't even come up in conversation, even when they were marketing it. Hangouts, on the other hand, I get meeting requests all the time that include a Hangouts link. It's a quite popular technology...in my, admittedly limited, experience, it is a leading option, if not the leading option, in the "let's schedule an online meeting" sort of way. So, I have no ide…

I was happy with hangouts. When they took away merged SMS...that showed someone seems to be whiteanting the product or just wasn't the right person to make decisions about a messaging app. Then they pivoted to a business focused product, that was the death bell ringing IMO.

I think hangouts was their way to a decent messaging platform at some point.

Now I think they'd be better off supporting signal or buying Facebook...

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to, otherwise Microsoft will trample them with their SharePoint/Office online offering.

Apple is currently trampling Google in messaging.

I don't think that true in the broad messaging space (speaking of martekshare), mostly because apple limits itself to the portion of the market that happens to own apple products. Facebook is, though.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#95

Does anyone have a good alternative for someone who is not tech savvy at all and on an Android phone? I set this up on my mom’s phone because she doesn’t get good enough cell reception at or around her place so an internet based messaging system works best. She is in very poor health and can barely hold the phone so something that doesn’t have a lot of small icons and in general just easy to setup and use would be gr…

Setup a family slack. Works well, full media support. Options for bringing other people in and having family connection there, or you can just DM each other.

Slack is significantly more complex than most messaging apps.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also only care about stupid metrics. One google dev said they got given an old project and they found it was full of bugs and reporting loads of bad info so the dev added a bunch of tests that picked up on the bugs and bad data and then they were denied the promotion because the errors logged from the program they were working on went up since they started working on it.

this kind of nonsense will be the death of google

I'm not so sure. Googles core product is search and that has been fairly rock solid as long as it has existed. A lot of the fuckery has been around their other products and I think the company could probably afford to shut down most of them and continue to run fine.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an Xoogler's perspective, the launches are all about the promos. Eg, just think about all those engineers who would not have gotten a promotion because then they would not have had a product launch in their promo packet.

The technical term for this is “circle jerk”.

[deleted]

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this kind of nonsense will be the death of google

I'm not so sure. Googles core product is search and that has been fairly rock solid as long as it has existed. A lot of the fuckery has been around their other products and I think the company could probably afford to shut down most of them and continue to run fine.

I always wonder if the other projects are just retainer projects. They dont really care as much what happens, they just dont want those engineers on the open market.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#99
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what Meet is. When I add an event in Google Calender, there is an "Add Conferencing" dropdown...in it is "Hangouts". That adds a conference link to the event, which I can then share with whoever I want to meet with. When it comes time to meet, I open the email reminder, or look in my calendar, and click the link. Everybody shows up...we meet. That's Hangouts, as far as I know. It opens in the Hangouts gr…

That thing you are describing used to be Hangouts, but is now Meet.

Nobody told me. Or Google, apparently. https://photos.app.goo.gl/E9qk9KJC73VoEj5y6
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