tl;dr: after pushing rcs so hard for years, killing hangouts well after forgetting about it, & hiding it from gmail, google now wants you to use its (and google allo’s) successor, google chat.
Google’s promotion-pack culture strikes again. You don’t get promoted at Google for “maintaining a successful product and keeping people happy.” You do get promoted for launching a new product, even if it competes with another well-liked Google product.
So if you want to be successful at Google, you launch a new chat service.
Damn that is such a stupid way of doing things too. Eventually user goodwill depletes and you’re left with a significant investment in products that don’t even generate profit or good.
google’s messaging strategy has gotten so bad that they now have to remind consumers which of the apps are made for them. i myself had no clue that the google chat app in the play store was targeted towards consumers, i just assumed that the app was google workspaces only considering they always push rcs & that the play store description doesn’t go two sentences without talking about enterprise & google workspaces.
it’s kinda wild when you consider that they had a 17 year headstart on this & still somehow lost the messaging app/site race multiple times
It’s pretty hilarious how badly they’ve fucked this up. I have no interest in Google Chat at all because it’s almost certain they’ll replace it with yet another service before I even have a chance to settle in.
I enjoyed using Hangouts. I still do. But the plethora of communication apps Google makes always give me chills that the judgement day is just round the corner. And by the time it arrives, it will just end up as another name on the list without much resort.
same, back ~2015-2018 i was hangouts’ biggest fan. now i avoid most google platforms in general aside from gmail, android & youtube. i can’t trust anything else to stay around anymore, & even when they do keep an app alive they end up just endlessly shuffling them around like this for no reason
Using Google apps used to be a smooth and seamless experience but it’s become a slog. The best you can hope for is that they’ll just stop supporting whatever service you like and just let it rot without updates for years while you are allowed to keep using it. Otherwise they’ll just force you to migrate around constantly while merging or fragmenting the experience until the former happens anyway.
It’s exhausting and it’s utterly destroyed my desire to check out anything new in their ecosystem.
I feel the same way used to love hangouts, tried allo. But at this point I don’t even use rcs because although it’s “open” no third party developers can make apps for it. Using matrix with bridges via beeper is how I integrate all my chats now and makes life way easier
“We promise we wont kill this one!”
I have a hard time trying new google stuff because it seems they kill it a few years later. Google used to be amazing, now I’m highly skeptical of the company. I’ve even switched to using Bing because google searches just result in a bunch of AI shit and other SEO bullshit.
This trend is bad for the Google brand, and I’m surprised that the higher ups there don’t understand it. Why should I use a Google service and get attached to it if they are going to unexpectedly remove it entirely?
How long until Google Earth gets the axe? Or even Gmail? I’m writing this on my Google Pixel, but they could theoretically just say “naw we wanna leave the phone market” and then may not make the phone any longer or not provide OS or security updates if that is their prerogative.
For such a large tech company, they have the resources to run these services at cost in order to have their users be more valuable to them in the long term.
I’m still bitter about them completely dismantling the original Google Talk desktop application two decades ago (yes they weren’t shortened to app then lol) as it was the best communication platform of its time and had very clear voice comms.
I remember I actually used Allo, and Hangouts
Seriously google WTF
I don’t think I ever even heard of Allo until the news articles started coming out about Google killing it off. I used Hangouts briefly, but I didn’t know a lot of people who used it. I am surprised they are trying chat again.
Huh? They confused 1st of July with 1st of April?
Another chat app???
They don’t get tired announcing and killing all of those chat apps???
Who’s going to bother inviting friends to chat in a platform that will be killed in one year max???
I used GTalk with the family.
Then you killed it.
(GTalk not the family)
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Please use Signal. It is a great alternative!
Surprisingly it’s been really easy to get people on signal, haven’t had to really try convincing people at all just explain what it is and they get it
It’s impossible to keep up with Google’s various services. Unless it’s Gmail or Photos, it’ll probably get killed within a year.
Photos already took place of another application killed by Google. It can be killed again.
