Technology @lemmy.world AnActOfCreation @programming.dev 7 mo. ago

Would anything get you to use Google Chat with friends?

9to5google.com Would anything get you to use Google Chat with friends?

With Apple’s RCS for iPhone announcement, Google is undoubtedly moving full steam ahead on Messages and RCS as its consumer...

Is this a rhetorical question? 😂

42 comments

If I needed a message system that I knew would make messages unavailable after a few years because it was shut down by a company that never supports side projects this would be a valuable service.
- This, never commit to any Google products beside search, maps, mail and Android
  
  I learned that lesson with Google+. I loved it back in the day, then suddenly they just canned it.
  
  But what about our Lord and Savior, RCS?
- That's ironic, because Google Chat to this day has migrated chats over from Hangouts and effectively served messaging for over a decade. But even Hangouts migrated chats over from Google Talk, which I personally used at least as far back as 2010.
  
  To put that into perspective, Apple's iMessage has only been around since 2011.
  
  You have no idea how many messages I had in Wave. Do you realize how many Google messaging services have come and gone with zero portability?
  
  https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-allo-hangouts-talk-messaging-mess-timeline
Back in 2010 my friend group and I tried. Google kept changing their chat programs and we'd keep having to migrate or change what we did. Eventually we went to discord and it was at least stable.

We tried, Google. We tried. I won't go back.
No, because Google will just go and randomly cancel.

All my family and friends used to use Hangouts and it was perfect. I'd been with it since Google Talk but it was Hangouts SMS and functional video chat integration that won everyone over. Then SMS was removed, and later there was talk of it changing to Chats... and the stench of Allo and Duo was still in the air so we abandoned ship rather than bothering.

Now we're on a mix of WhatsApp and Messenger depending on the social group. Not really my preference but once bitten, twice shy so Google products get a hard pass.

Also, Chats is ugly. A horizontal bar in a sea of whitespace is a terrible separator for a conversation. And chat heads don't work in group messages like they did in Hangouts so it sucks for knowing if people in a group chat are up to speed.
- That stretch of time when hangouts did SMS was beautiful.
I’d trust Plankton with the krabby patty secret formula more than I’d trust Google with another chat app
- I'd trust 18th-20th century French populous that they have an appropriate form of government more than I'd trust Google it has a chat app it'll commit to.
I’d rather create two RSS feeds over which we would communicate
- I’d rather use a usenet board
They have released and killed about a dozen chat services. What makes this one different?
- The name, I guess
  
  There actually was a Google Chat before. It used XMPP. They're even recycling names, cause they're starting to run out of names from all the past services they killed.
Maybe if they reintroduced hangouts and let me:

make phone calls

make phone phone calls with Google voice

make voice chats

send sms messages

send sms messages with Google voice

send chat messages

make video calls

permit all those options (except native sms) from Gmail, the desktop app, and the dedicated webpage

collate my conversation with people among all the communications methods listed

I'd be tempted to use them again. It amazes me that they made an app that encompassed basically every modern form of individual communication laid out in a clear understandable manner and they just thought it would be better if every feature they offered were it's own app. Now I have to remember which medium I used to talk with somebody and use an app with fewer features.

I miss hangouts.
- add faxing
  
  And telegrams.
- Hangouts was peak Google messaging. It was iMessage before iMessage. I don't know if it necessarily came first, but all my friends who have iPhones and use iMessage now used to use Hangouts on Android. I think Google has a huge opportunity to be the popular brand and lost it.
- Man those were the days. I still use Voice and have years of messages in there, I dread the day they cancel it and I need to find something else.
If somebody broke into my house, stuck a gun to my head and told me to use it or they would blast me, I would probably use it then.
- probably
- The gun would be a faster way to go
If it becomes an open-source, decentralized service with bridges and more users than Matrix, I'd consider it.
If google had just built on top of Hangouts starting in like 2013, they'd have a great product. It was built into gmail. That's a huge install base. It was just there and they just... didn't do it. Too many middle managers and asshole resume padding engineers, not enough adult supervision.
No.
Why would I use a chat app tailored to businesses to chat with my friends ?

Why not using Slack while we're at it ?
- Google chat is just Google hangouts and was one of the first messengers out there I believe. My family still uses it to have chats between Android and iPhone users.
  
  Not even remotely. But at the time it seemed the better option. Migrating everyone from the walled gardens of AOL instant messenger and MSN messenger. To something a bit more open and at the time we wrongly thought more stable. The original G+ chat was their own xmpp server. And for a while was fully interoperable with other xmpp servers. But easier to convince people to go to "Google” than some other weird domain name. Then Google closed it off. Which sucked, but as long as they would be less restrictive about what platform and how you interfaced with it. Everything would still be okay. Right, right? Then they shut down Google Plus. And the roller coaster started. It got rolled out his chat. Then became Hangouts for the first time. At some point it became allo. And eventually went back to Hangouts again before they killed it off yet again.
  
  The only way anyone could or should use it again. Is if they implement just a straight up XMPP server tied in to Gmail. And leave it interoperable with all other XMPP servers. As part of Gmail, it might actually stand some permanence. So long as we all don't remember inbox.
I currently use it with friends, and have been using it since it was called Google Talk.
What was that thing called in 2009? Google wave I think? It was amazing. Got us through grad school. So of course they killed it.
I would rather use netcat command to send massages than Google Product.
Yes, my friends using it
- I use it with my wife and friends more than what'sapp or messenger
I use it with a group of friends and we love it.
There is nothing that would get me to use that as there are dozens of better and more private solutions
Not being snarky, if they created an open source federated protocol with a foundation to hold the patents to guarantee their freedom. I would definitely move on to a Google designed, Google engineered, Google ran, end-to-end encrypted third-party verified federated platform. They can actually be good engineers when they want to be.

Any platform where Google is in sole control, and where they could get bored and turn the service off, I will never use.

Somebody will get promoted for making a new platform, somebody will get promoted for having change at global scale, and then nobody will touch it ever again to innovate or fix anything ever. Because it won't get them there next level promotion, iterating is not global scale change. As an organization they'll abandon it, when the user numbers get low enough they'll kill it. 2 to 5 years. So the platform absolutely must be decentralized and federated

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