Google wants a single video messaging app, will merge Google Meet and Duo
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I feel like Google's incentivisation process cause this mess. They basically say, "in order to be promoted beyond X level, you must have a large impact". So Googlers see how the messaging space is a low-hanging fruit, and they make something new. Google upper management sees lack of traction in existing messaging system (because they've mismanaged this space so much), and they put their marketing weight behind the new system. Meanwhile everyone else sticks to the spiritual successor to Messages while leaking users because they don't trust Google anymore.
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Echo_Skies
Seniorius Lurkius
^^ this. Also, if they followed through on supporting it long-term and not abandoning it 12 months down the road. Make it great!...then leave it the fuck alone.
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Oh this is great. Can you imagine if there was like a single place in Google to Hangout and do all your chatting, video, SMS, and everything else, and it worked really well everywhere?
But it's impossible. You'd have to... go back to 2012 to get something like that.
But it's impossible. You'd have to... go back to 2012 to get something like that.
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Next, they can integrate it into Messages.
Now what could that they call that? Hangouts?
Now what could that they call that? Hangouts?
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Google's marketing missteps are outdone only by their failures to maintain a sane product lifecycle. Want a Zoom meeting? Everybody knows Zoom. Want a Facetime call? Everybody knows Facetime.
Want to do Duo or Meet or Hangouts or Messaging, or... literally everyone who isn't an engineer is LUCKY to maybe know what you're talking about as "oh, that Google thing?"
... inevitably followed by: "Nah, let's just use Zoom."
I've given up on trying to connect with anyone who doesn't have a CS degree on _any_ Google platform.
Want to do Duo or Meet or Hangouts or Messaging, or... literally everyone who isn't an engineer is LUCKY to maybe know what you're talking about as "oh, that Google thing?"
... inevitably followed by: "Nah, let's just use Zoom."
I've given up on trying to connect with anyone who doesn't have a CS degree on _any_ Google platform.
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I'm waiting for something to become the dominant messaging platform amongst friends that's not SMS group chat. I use Google Chat with a few people, Free Slack with few more, iMessage with my parents and SMS Group Chat with the rest because this space is so broken.
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Switching tools is too much effort to undertake without some real benefit. What is this going to give me that Zoom doesn't? And I don't mean price - I mean functionality in a mixed Mac/Windows/Android/IOS environment.
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Back in my day, we had an app called Hangouts. It did everything! There was SMS integration, so I can use my Google Voice number to make phone calls and do texting from my phone, computer, or my tablet. It was one of the first experiences I had being able to make calls and texts when there was no cell service but I found a little coffee shop that had WiFi so I could make a quick call. That clever Hangouts app, it could also do video calls! Not only video calls, but group video calls also! And it was used by my friends and family here, and colleagues across the globe!
But, Google realized that having one thing that worked wasn't really their forte. No, what they wanted was 11 apps to do what the one app did, while removing some core features, they wanted apps having overlapping features, all with the apparent goal to just cause confusion amongst the people who used their services because reasons. Now, here they are, still merging apps, deleting apps, replacing them with other apps, and they will never really get how people were satisfied with the prodigal son Hangouts.
But, Google realized that having one thing that worked wasn't really their forte. No, what they wanted was 11 apps to do what the one app did, while removing some core features, they wanted apps having overlapping features, all with the apparent goal to just cause confusion amongst the people who used their services because reasons. Now, here they are, still merging apps, deleting apps, replacing them with other apps, and they will never really get how people were satisfied with the prodigal son Hangouts.
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With all due disrespect and loathing to Facebook, WhatsApp kind of has achieved that status. Especially outside of the US. My 70-year-old mother uses WhatsApp with her Tai Chi class group. My 14-year-old goddaughter sends me her birthday list on WhatsApp...
The US is really the one market that seems like it hasn't gelled on some de-facto winner at this point. Aside from Telegram and LINE in certain specific parts of the world, can't think of anything else that even comes close to WhatsApp's saturation. *shrug*
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I finally got my family to agree on Google Duo to video chat with my son. They are all using Apple products and I am not, but they all conformed. Now Duo is super buggy with my Pixel 6 ("can't connect to the internet" is the most common error message and requires a reboot to get past).
And NOW I see this and find out they are going to have to migrate to a new app.
Eff this. I will probably migrate to Zoom or some other platform. Heck, FB messages is more durable but less likely that my parents have it.
And NOW I see this and find out they are going to have to migrate to a new app.
Eff this. I will probably migrate to Zoom or some other platform. Heck, FB messages is more durable but less likely that my parents have it.
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I assume this is because they're about to release two more random video & chat apps. Because otherwise they're not going to have any buffer at all when they randomly kill off Google Meet in 3... 2... 1...
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Oh, just come on now! You *had* a platform with IP-based instant messaging, SMS/MMS fallback for people who didn't have the mobile app, multi-party video calls with a single tap in a group chat, voice calling over IP, and it ran on Android, iOS, and in the browser!!
I seriously don't understand why they keep shooting themselves in the foot. I can only imagine it's because they developed new back end platforms that enabled them to do something or other, then wanted to migrate people on to those.
But as a user, it went from "hey, if you have a Gmail account, you can do all the things in a single place" to "come on guys, can you please just try installing the new app that doesn't do things nearly as well and loses 2/3 of the features because I don't want an iPhone and get sick of being downgraded to SMS/MMS in every group chat?"
Not a good look from a company that had beaten Apple, Facebook, and a few others to the punch in some very real ways for a short period there.
I seriously don't understand why they keep shooting themselves in the foot. I can only imagine it's because they developed new back end platforms that enabled them to do something or other, then wanted to migrate people on to those.
But as a user, it went from "hey, if you have a Gmail account, you can do all the things in a single place" to "come on guys, can you please just try installing the new app that doesn't do things nearly as well and loses 2/3 of the features because I don't want an iPhone and get sick of being downgraded to SMS/MMS in every group chat?"
Not a good look from a company that had beaten Apple, Facebook, and a few others to the punch in some very real ways for a short period there.
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That and a lack of overall product direction. It's just a manifestation of Conway's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law) in the product space
While admittedly an extreme case, I suspect that it's an issue for organizations with both overly-flat structures once teams start losing track of what other teams are working on.
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Messaging apps and Google is like Google fighting the hydra, they axe 1 and 2 take its place...
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Imagine if Android phones, like iPhones, had a long established messaging app installed on all phones that could also do photo sharing and video calls. Oh that's right, they did: Hangouts.
There's also Google's Messages, which now has RCS chat, a universal standard, that also allows photo sharing. RCS standard has lots of advanced features including video calls, though Google isn't taking advantage of that.
I think bratkitty is on to something with Google's incentivisation process, but I don't think it is just making an impact--it also has to be something new, which means you don't get ahead by supporting existing products (unless it is Search, and the advertising engines underneath it all).
I also think darlox is on to something. I think the reason you need to have a CS degree to use a lot of Google products is that PhDs are designing them. Complicated? Not to the designers. (Did you ever try to figure out Google+ Circles? I did. I ended up losing photos into that labyrinth never to be seen again. Facebook succeeded because even your Grandmother could figure it out). Google needs to hire some people without PhDs who fail their hiring IQ tests but have a lot of common sense about what is easy to use, or even compelling to use.
One key factor is consistency--having an established product that never goes away, something lacking at Google in the messaging space.
There's also Google's Messages, which now has RCS chat, a universal standard, that also allows photo sharing. RCS standard has lots of advanced features including video calls, though Google isn't taking advantage of that.
I think bratkitty is on to something with Google's incentivisation process, but I don't think it is just making an impact--it also has to be something new, which means you don't get ahead by supporting existing products (unless it is Search, and the advertising engines underneath it all).
I also think darlox is on to something. I think the reason you need to have a CS degree to use a lot of Google products is that PhDs are designing them. Complicated? Not to the designers. (Did you ever try to figure out Google+ Circles? I did. I ended up losing photos into that labyrinth never to be seen again. Facebook succeeded because even your Grandmother could figure it out). Google needs to hire some people without PhDs who fail their hiring IQ tests but have a lot of common sense about what is easy to use, or even compelling to use.
One key factor is consistency--having an established product that never goes away, something lacking at Google in the messaging space.
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The point of being a Product Manager at Google isn't to coordinate, release, and maintain products. The point of being a Product Manager at Google is to be able to put that on your resume and raise VC money.
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I used to use Google messaging apps extensively (I think when it was called "Hangouts?"), but gave up when "text and call your friends" became "track Google's wandering strategy and realign annually."
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I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but this sort of thing is exactly why I've been slowly-- over the last two years-- migrating as much as possible away from Google. Gmail will take a long while yet, and Android won't happen until the next time I get a new phone, but.. I've already dropped Google Fi, set up a new mail service, and just started slowly pruning down the Google reliance.
Just so very very tired of dealing with a company that cannot be trusted to be consistent and to not backstab its customers the second that Corporate ADHD sets in again.
Just so very very tired of dealing with a company that cannot be trusted to be consistent and to not backstab its customers the second that Corporate ADHD sets in again.
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I get my experiences aren't everyone's experiences, but I don't know if anyone around me (who I care to talk to on the reg) use WhatsApp post-FB. Pre-FB acquisition, yeah, it was our big thing, but now it's ... MMS Group Chat.
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I just got use to having Google Meet available in the Gmail app. Don't screw this up Google and take away this feature from the Gmail app.
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Celery Man
Ars Legatus Legionis
I miss using Trillian so you could talk to your friends no matter if they were on AIM, MSN Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger.
… although even then I had IRC in the mix as well, so there’s always been some splintering.
… although even then I had IRC in the mix as well, so there’s always been some splintering.
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Celery Man
Ars Legatus Legionis
Introducing Google's newest video messaging service:
I’ve seen this one - if you watch the tape, you turn into a pigeon after a week.
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I'm a deep-fried nerd and I follow tech-news rather religiously and even I can't keep my head straight with Google's products and the constant churn, merging, launching, killing, re-launching, then re-killing!
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Because that's how you get promoted inside Google. You build something new from the ground up. It's new, it's sexy, it's got all the hip language features, it's visible, and you get promoted, get a massive raise, and move on to something else.
"Maintaining the stuff that already exists" is the opposite of all that. It's invisible drudge work, and you're not going to get promoted for "Keeping this thing used by hundreds of millions of users working exactly as it was," nor will you get any internal recognition.
And so things rot on the vine until the entire vineyard has moved on (Google Reader was, to my understanding, running on an ancient, archaic fork of the codebase, because nobody wanted to bother updating it to use the current stuff - no glory - so it ran until the plug got pulled).
Dear Google: Please Stop. You know why nobody uses the new stuff? It's because "This, too, shall get deprecated and abandoned!" has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody trusts you to maintain the shiny new stuff, so it has few users who are only halfheartedly using it expecting it to die, and... then based on lack of exponential crazy growth to the moon, it gets shut down. And the cycle repeats.
Meanwhile, I'm personally pretty happy with Matrix. Add the various bridges to services, and I've got something like Adium or Pidgin, just cross-device. Sadly, it's not easy to set up...
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Too funny. How many of these messaging, audio, and video services has Google merged/unmerged/created new over the past 5-6 years? They just can't seem to get this right. Hangouts, Allo, Duo, Google Voice, Meet, Messages, Google Talk, Google Chat...
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Nope. Let's hope it goes poorly and people stop wasting time adopting one Google app after another only to have to migrate again.
I mean, just look at the migration path. Suppose you want to adopt an app now to be safe for the future. You see that Google Meet is the future of video chat, so you install it. Wrong. You're supposed to adopt Duo now because Meet will be killed and Duo will then be rebranded as Meet.
Or you could just skip Google and install Zoom instead.
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I used to be diehard google chat then a Hangouts user, even on iOS it was my main. But moved away when they kept creating new ones and killing old ones and merging and moving things for no reason. Me and my friends and family got sick of the shell game. Why is Google like this?
Also, while we are at it, bring back Inbox! I still mourn the death of Inbox, the best email interface of all time. I've been using Shortwave but it is still not as good as Inbox was. RIP
Also, while we are at it, bring back Inbox! I still mourn the death of Inbox, the best email interface of all time. I've been using Shortwave but it is still not as good as Inbox was. RIP
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What's amazing is that everyone knows this. Everyone has known this for years and years. Everyone talks about it. It appears in the coverage of all of their products every time. And what has Google done to address it? Absolutely nothing.
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It is.
I open Google Messages, and there is a video chat icon in the top right, next to phone call, search thread, and the 3-dot menu. Clicking the video chat icon opens Duo to that contact, ready to start a call. If the person isn't on Duo, it prompts me to invite them instead.
What integration are you looking for that isn't present already?
Edit: I get that dogpiling on Google being shitty at messaging apps is the cool thing, and I happily shit on their abject failure to develop a coherent strategy, but don't downvote accurate information without comment.
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This just reminded me I first got my iPhone 13 years ago, I used Beejive for a quite a while because it was cross-platform like this.
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The death of the all-inclusive Hangouts was when I decided to dump them altogether. I kept an email address there for use as a junk-email account and because I need it for Android activation, but otherwise, nothing. They are just way too inconsistent of a company for me to even consider using on a personal level, let alone recommending their services, programs, or solutions for use in the business world.
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Is this true though? I haven't checked in on this topic in a while but last I recall, telecoms were either refusing to implement RCS or implementing proprietary versions that won't talk to any others, prompting Google to implement their own version in the Messages app. Did all that ever get sorted out?
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As long as the firehose of advertising money keeps flowing, why should they? Will changing their ways take Andriod from 82% market share to something meaningfully greater?
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sigmasirrus
Ars Scholae Palatinae
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