
The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts - fastest963
https://www.blog.google/products/messages/latest-messages-allo-duo-and-hangouts/
======
jordanthoms
This is just an utter mess. Google keeps ignoring and trying to kill Hangouts
(which should still be called GChat, that was an incredibly stupid rebrand),
and building new products instead of investing in the one which actually has
some potential.

Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with
GChat/Google talk from the early Gmail days and kept investing in it. It was
great on the early versions of Android! The failure here is entirely self
imposed and a major indictment of their senior management team.

~~~
Cookingboy
I was there when that happened. The whole rebranding/transition of GTalk/GChat
was the result of some political muscle flex by Social and its army of PMs,
then after Social lost its favorite child status Allo was born as a result,
championed by another army of PMs, and I wonder if Duo had a similar story of
birth.

>Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck
with GChat/Google talk from the early Gmail days and kept investing in it.

That's just not what Google was back then. It was all about PMs/designers
wanting to jump onto the shinest and newest projects and lots of politics were
involved to win support/attention/resources from the top management.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
What is a PM? I am getting insight into how google works because this sounds
like a bunch of idiotic internal wars between acronym teams instead of
focusing on making actual useful products.

~~~
otabdeveloper1
> focusing on making actual useful products

A 'product' is something you sell to clients.

Google's only product is advertising, and they don't need to focus on making
better advertising because they are a monopoly.

Everything else Google does is just a smokescreen for investors and a creeping
fear that they won't be able to exist in a post-monopoly world.

~~~
beagle3
> Google's only product is advertising,

Google's main product is user attention, which they sell to advertisers in the
form of advertising.

Right now, they farm this attention mostly through web search, but hone it
through data they collect with other venues, such as e.g. location and other
data collected from Android handsets, the vast tentacles of Google Analytics,
Google DNS, G-Suite (GMail, G Docs, G Drive, ...) etc.

AFAIK, G-Suite for business is actually making money (a round-off error
compared to advertising, but still, a profitable business), and the various
cloud storage and compute offering are actually making money that is not a
round-off error (though still dwarfed by advertising).

Also, they DO need to make better advertising (and farm better attention),
because they are in many ways a "natural monopoly" \- they're the monopoly
because they are the best in many ways, mostly not because of network effects
or anti-competitive behaviour (which they have practiced at times, especially
with YouTube, but not nearly to the extent practiced by any other player of
this size).

~~~
debatem1
A nit: afaik Google's DNS service has committed to never associating data with
other Google services. For reference, it's the last bullet point on
[https://developers.google.com/speed/public-
dns/faq](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq)

~~~
beagle3
Thanks.

I would take that (as anything else) with a grain of salt. They might not
today, but things change and they might tomorrow (you know, they used to "not
be evil" and they aren't anymore).

Furthermore, rest assured that everyone who can, which includes - but is not
limited to - three letter agencies, is monitoring traffic into 8.8.8.8 and
8.8.4.4

~~~
candiodari
On the other hand, most of the big ISPs have been caught not just handing your
DNS requests over to advertisers along with the info they have on you, but
actually sending back false dns replies because of advertiser money.

And if you compare to what happens on hotels' or other such dns servers.

I'm saying, perhaps things will change at Google, but they'd have to change a
whole lot before they'd be as bad as the normal alternative.

------
tehlike
The text of the blog post is very confusing at best. I consistently got the
feeling we have no idea how to do messaging, and we are throwing many things
to see which one sticks. In other words, the blog post felt like it was a post
about telling how we have no idea what we are doing using some thousand words.

Messages app is very primitive. I like hangouts way more. I can hop from text
message to video chat with family with a single click. My project fi
integrates nicely too, and to me this is a pretty good value prop.

Disclaimer, google employee in an unrelated product.

~~~
scotchio
Hopping from text to video in a single click is cool...

But the #1 thing that stops me from even considering buying an Android device
is "it's not iMessage".

iMessage doesn't have single click to video, but it's also automatic. No
hassle at all and I can blue bubble send perfection to any other iPhone-r.
It's also synced to all my devices flawlessly.

I think that's what is really missing. People don't mind opening another app
to place call / facetime / hangout video. They want simple, clear phone
messaging that isn't an "app"

~~~
samstave
[removed]

~~~
ovao
Why did you let your employer effectively commandeer your personal phone
number?

------
sorenjan
I'm pretty sure this blog post was forced due to the recent articles about
Hangouts and Allo on 9to5google.com [0], [1].

Thinking that Messages, which uses SMS and RCS were available, would have any
impact on messaging is wishful thinking at best. Where I live almost nobody
uses SMS for person to person conversations, it's mainly used for package
notifications, 2FA codes, and so on. RCS isn't available as far as I know, and
I wouldn't want to use a mobile only protocol controlled by the carriers
anyway. It's strange that Google, a company that seems to have a phobia of
native apps and wants everything done in the browser, would push for this kind
of solution.

If Google had used some of their highly payed top tier engineers and at least
one competent product manager to develop Hangouts instead of pushing out the
mobile only, seemingly India focused, Allo they might have had a chance.
Imagine being the person in a family or group of friends that convinced people
to switch to Allo, you would look like a fool by now.

[0] [https://9to5google.com/2018/12/02/google-hangouts-
shutting-d...](https://9to5google.com/2018/12/02/google-hangouts-shutting-
down/)

[1] [https://9to5google.com/2018/12/05/google-allo-shutting-
down/](https://9to5google.com/2018/12/05/google-allo-shutting-down/)

~~~
ehsankia
> Where I live almost nobody uses SMS for person to person

Isn't that recursive thinking? No one uses SMS because it's primitive and
limited compared to regular messengers.

> I wouldn't want to use a mobile only protocol

I'm curious, but could RCS be interchangeably used both through provider and
through a host such as Google? Could Google not host their own RCS backend?

~~~
grahn
> No one uses SMS because it's primitive and limited compared to regular
> messengers.

You also have to take into account that SMS is 5-10 times more expensive
almost everywhere outside the US. Unless you have a flat-rate plan, a single
140 character messages is about 10 cents where I live. And even if you have a
flat-rate plan for domestic messages, it's 1-2 USD (per message!) when sent to
friends and family abroad. I don't use SMS because it's just being
ridiculously over-priced. I want my device to use data to send data,
regardless of what kind it is.

~~~
RcIss
" more expensive almost everywhere outside the US."

It's (sms/texting) free ([http://mobile.free.fr/](http://mobile.free.fr/)) and
unlimited on a 2 euros monthly phone subscription with 2 hours of voice
communication in France. That makes it the cheapest way to communicate at all,
here. Cheaper than voice and much cheaper than internet data. Even the
absolute poorest of the country can use texting. It's more accessible than
DATA driven apps and can run on dumb phones.

------
fencepost
Someone at Google just wants to make sure that people know where they can go
for a consistent and stable messaging experience. I'm just not quite sure if
they intend that to be Skype, Facebook, Slack or maybe Discord.

~~~
woogiewonka
Google chat services have always been a big joke to me. I'd cringe any time
someone said "can we Hangout" or "Google Hangout". It's like nobody at google
knows what "hang out" means and how that does not apply to conversations.

Is it just me or does Google basically throw a bunch of money at a bunch of
things to see what sticks, scrap the failures and repeat the process over and
over again - and in the process messing with services some people actually
like.

I can no longer put trust in Google's consumer product reliability knowing
that at any point Google will shut the service down because it does not meet
some internal quota on usage.

~~~
fencepost
Could be worse. They could have named it "Chill"

~~~
mikelward
Shhh! Don't give them ideas!

------
millstone
I've been in many come-to-Jesus meetings wherein Leadership acknowledges their
strategic failures, then busts out a presentation detailing the New Strategy,
consisting of mild tweaks of the Existing Strategy.

Mild tweaks are great because they spare Leadership the pain of making hard
decisions.

> And by refocusing on Messages and Duo for consumers and Hangouts Chat and
> Hangouts Meet for team collaboration

"Instead of working on five products, we're 'refocusing' down to four
products." Right.

This has the stench of a post-faction justification that expertly avoids
stepping on too many toes. IME Leadership gets axed by Senior Leadership not
too long after.

~~~
joenathanone
They also fail to address Google Voice, their VOIP/SMS-OIP app. Here's to
hoping they don't cancel it down the line too.

------
dkhenry
What gets me about the entire Google messaging ecosystem is how they manage to
be so bad. My messaging system of choice is Signal, and it looks to be about
three or four full time people that work on that. It manages to handle SMS,
Grop Chat, Video Chat, and End to End encrypted chat for me. I imagine there
are more Vice Presidents assigned to Allo then there are employees at Signal,
and signal manages to out compete them.

~~~
Eridrus
Signal and Allo actually have a similar number of installs, they're both in
the 10-50m installs bucket in the Play store.

I use Signal, but it's fine at best, but it's not really going to break out of
it's niche.

~~~
tubaguy50035
I can't deal with how signal desktop works. I DO NOT want messaging tied to my
phone. I want it tied to an account that works wherever I sign in. I'd love to
use Signal, but can't deal with that.

~~~
pmlnr
You want XMPP or Matrix.

~~~
lmm
Or, realistically, Discord. I love open protocols but I do want a certain
level of polish in the products I use.

------
joekrill
I saw the title and thought: "Finally, they're going to admit to what a mess
they've created and propose a way forward". But nope, just a PR fluff post.

------
jknz
FAQ: how start a video call using Google products?

Answer: Go to Gmail and send an email to the other party "can you Skype now?".

Literally. I had to schedule a video call recently by email. There is simply
no formulation to schedule a video call using the name of one of google's
products.

"Can you Hangout tomorrow?", "Can you Duo tomorrow", "Can you chat with Allo
tomorrow?".

Nothing would work without confusing the other party with some probability.
"Can you Skype tomorrow" always works, with everyone, no confusion.

~~~
ndespres
To which many would reply, "Yes, I can Skype with you. I am at work, so I'll
be using my Skype for Business program which recently replaced Lync. My Skype
will talk to yours, right? Oh it says here that Skype for Business (which used
to be Lync (which used to be Office Communicator)), is now Teams, so uhh can
you just call me on my phone instead. Thanks

~~~
beart
Skype for Business and Teams are not the same app. That said, I've found Teams
very lacking in exactly the way Skype is not, and Skype lacking in exactly the
way Teams is not which is very frustrating.

~~~
zapzupnz
SfB is deprecated, and Teams is designated its replacement.

------
tjoff
Is this a joke? That whole blog post reads like satire.

 _Communicating with the people in our lives is one of the most important
things we do every day, whether it’s chatting with friends about an upcoming
trip, calling mom to check in, or touching base with colleagues._

So when I'm forced to move off hangouts for those connections that I still
user over it - what do you think the chances are that I will choose a google
product?

------
sorenjan
Does anyone think that now is Microsoft's best chance to revive Skype as a
household name synonymous with chat and video calls? I doubt anyone would want
to use any chat app from Google anymore, Facebook is getting really bad PR
which could affect WhatsApp as well soon enough. Signal and Telegram are good
alternatives but lack marketing muscle. Slack and Discord are mainly used for
group chat in professional and gaming circles.

Skype was almost a genericized trademark meaning video call, that seems to
have been taken over by Facetime to some extent. If Microsoft would make it
easy to chat with friends and businesses from the same app, and threw some
fresh paint on it, they might take some of the market back.

~~~
pavanagrawal123
I use skype right now to chat with some friends and it actually works really
well for me. Cross platform, video calls, captioning now available is really
awesome.

~~~
kibwen
Does it work from within a browser yet? Last time I tried, installing Skype
was a surprising hassle on my Windows machine; there were at least two
versions being offered through various Microsoft channels, and they appeared
to have different feature sets, and I couldn't tell which one of them I ought
to be using or if one was deprecated. Discord has spoiled me with chat that
Just Works on the web.

~~~
pavanagrawal123
Try [https://preview.web.skype.com/](https://preview.web.skype.com/)

It is the universal Skype written in React (works natively on windows and
electroned on other Desktop OSes)

~~~
pmlnr
> Browser not supported

> Use Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome to access Skype for Web (Preview)
> experience.

> Alternatively, download Skype on your desktop computer.

That is on up to date Firefox on Debian unstable. Bravo.

~~~
NSAID
Same result on current Firefox with Windows 10

------
stupidbird
How are they still getting this wrong.

One app for consumers with video and messaging. Make it good, marry it, and
shoot the others into the sun.

~~~
woogiewonka
It's like nobody at Google uses an iPhone or has heard of Facetime. "Oh look,
there's an app that lets you call and at a tap of a button turns that call
into video! I wonder if we should do something similar?" "\- nah, that would
be too easy."

~~~
Latteland
I've had that for 10 years with google. I don't understand. I look at a
contact while in gmail, click on it to go to hangouts and click the video call
button.

------
brendanmc6
I have lived back and forth between Europe and the USA over the last few
years. Communication is always the most difficult part of the move. It's a
reminder of how far off our tech is from the true ideal.

In Europe, everyone has WhatsApp. For a while, this was great! One app, one
"to reply" list. A taste of what messaging could be.

I quickly found myself frustrated. WhatsApp relies on phone numbers, which
muddies up my contacts with people who keep old numbers for WhatsApp but do
SMS and calls on another. Then there was the time I switched my WhatsApp
number and couldn't receive messages from anyone until I sent them a message
first-- inadvertently pissing off a few friends of mine before I realized.

And now, being back in the States, Europeans are trying to call the number
listed on WhatsApp, and getting voicemail, and I have to change my email
signature to encourage them not to.

And my American colleages are sending me SMS and calling, but using my old
number from last year. Verizon won't let me keep a SIM for more than a few
months, so I have to pay the activation fee every year, and I can't use a
different provider because I bought a Verizon branded phone (NEVER AGAIN) and
I want LTE and Hotspots to work.

And my mom is used to iMessage, so she sends me horribly compressed photos via
SMS, no matter how often I tell her to send elsewhere. Who knows how many she
tried to send to my old number...

On top of all of this, I have active group chats going in WhatsApp, SMS,
Slack, Discord and Facebook messenger on any given day. I always forget who
said what, where. Digging up old addresses and contacts that people sent me is
a nightmare.

I often think about sending a mass message telling everyone to switch to
ONE_PERFECT_MESSAGING_APP. I thought that might be Allo (or is it Duo? Which
one is chat?). Imagine my anger if I had actually tried that! Thankfully my
euro tech skeptics talked me out of it-- "I will never switch to a Google
app!", they said.

What can I do? I feel hopeless, trapped between tech Giants making economic
decisions that hurt me, instead of working together to make our lives easier
(like they claim at the beginning of this PR piece)

EDIT: I don't like whining, I like solving problems-- so I created a therapy
group called OOMA - Only One Messaging App - and we are going to solve this
humanitarian problem. Our discord is here
[https://discord.gg/CmdgUp](https://discord.gg/CmdgUp)

~~~
mrkstu
This is the brilliance of iMessage where it gets critical mass- fallback to
SMS but pushing the iMessage identity tied to an account that follows you to
new phones/devices.

I think that iMessage network effect is a big reason for the steady market
share growth of iPhone in the US- none of the competitive apps have cross-
generational appeal, just iMessage.

~~~
brendanmc6
I agree with you, but a _hardware specific_ messaging app is just stupid.

As you can tell by the length of my last post, thinking about this situation
has got me upset.

So upset, that right now I've decided to launch a non-profit, open collective
organization called OOMA. Only One Messaging App.

OOMA will be comprised of the millions of people who are annoyed and upset at
the result of tech companies competing for our communication. We are taking
things into our own hands. We are agreeing to switch to ONE service, for ALL
of our messaging needs. All of us, all over the world, all at once.

We are going to do 5 things, in order: 1\. Choose a switch date. 2\. Define a
spec for the "perfect messaging app" (encryption, licensing, finance model,
features, tech, etc.) 3\. Invite companies to pitch their app, and/or secure
funding to develop our own to spec. 4\. Spread the word. 5\. Make the switch.

I'm going to prepare a marketing web page and (ironically) a discord server
right now. At the very worst it's a fun side project and way to express my
anger.

EDIT: OOMA server is live. If you think an app is not the solution, come tell
us why: [https://discord.gg/CmdgUp](https://discord.gg/CmdgUp)

~~~
yaacov
XKCD has a comic for just this situation:
[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

~~~
brendanmc6
Hahaha I had that in my copy clipboard while typing the post :)

For real though, has any sort of movement or organization tried to alleviate
these problems _without financial motivation?_

~~~
mxuribe
I encourage you to read about matrix
[[https://matrix.org](https://matrix.org)] - the protocol. In addition, there
are numerous open source clients to use
[[https://matrix.org/docs/projects/clients-
matrix](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/clients-matrix)]. Also, as far as
organizations, matrix.org has recently become a foundation moving towards
somewhat you described [[https://matrix.org/blog/2018/10/29/introducing-the-
matrix-or...](https://matrix.org/blog/2018/10/29/introducing-the-matrix-org-
foundation-part-1-of-2/)].

------
CivBase
So... this?

    
    
               | Text     | Video
      Business | Chat     | Meet
      Personal | Messages | Duo
    

I guess that makes a lot more sense... I just wish I knew why four separate
apps are needed in the first place.

Why can't text and audio/video be supported in the same app? Skype, Hangouts,
HipChat (RIP) and many other messaging programs have been doing it for ages.
It's simple and intuitive.

The Hangouts Chat/Meet split is particularly confusing. Aside from supporting
more people in a call, I really don't understand what makes a Meet call better
than the old Hangouts calls. My confusion is only compounded by Google's
continued support for calls on the old Hangouts (now "Hangouts Chat"?).

Is there really such a big difference between an enterprise chat service and a
personal one? Companies were turning to Hangouts long before Google announced
it would become an enterprise-focused service.

HipChat (RIP) and Slack have obvious enterprise features that would seem out-
of-place in a personal chat app... but Hangouts doesn't have any such
features. It became popular without them. Why change your development focus
all of the sudden? Why not continue marching towards a unified communications
app and let the enterprise customers just do their thing?

I'm sure, given proper context and information, most of the decisions leading
up to this point make sense in isolation. Still, Google really needs to sit
down and figure out where they want all these apps to be in 5 years because -
though I'm far from the first (or last) to say it - this is a mess.

~~~
based2
'Chat' supports 'Rich Communications Services' (RCS), the protocol that will
replace SMS.

[https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-rcs-
messaging/](https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-rcs-messaging/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8dneie/do_you_believ...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/8dneie/do_you_believe_that_apple_will_include_rcs_support/)

------
ericabiz
I count six different apps here:

Allo

Duo

Messages

Hangouts

Hangouts Chat

Hangouts Meet

I’m technical _and_ I follow news about Google, and I can still barely tell
what app does what and for whom. How is the vast majority of the world
supposed to keep up?

This is ridiculous.

~~~
sdinsn
Chat & Meet are for businesses, and Allo is ending. So the vast majority need
to only keep up with 3.

~~~
ericabiz
There’s a Googler in here who wrote a comment on this post: “I think it's good
to see that Hangouts Chat/Meet will be open to consumers eventually.”

I just don’t know. I’m at a complete loss for words on how Google can screw
this up so badly.

We actually use Hangouts every day for our business. I have been advocating a
move to Slack.

~~~
nicoburns
We found we got a nice boost in call quality when we moved to from hangouts to
slack. zoom.us is also good.

------
shubidubi
How about having only one app where i can simply use messaging and video? why
do i need to install 4 different apps for it?

~~~
ndnxhs
Because they gave 4 different people a promotion

~~~
shubidubi
give another promotion to the person who will combine all of them.

~~~
killjoywashere
pending ...

------
justinplouffe
If I understand this correctly none of these 4 products will allow you to send
text based messages to another person on a desktop computer without having to
create an entreprise hangout. Is that not a use case worth caring about
anymore? You can’t even chat with someone else from Google’s own Chrome OS.

~~~
sorenjan
Yes and no. You can use their Messages web client, but it's still going to be
SMS to and from your phone. It's a contrived and pretty ugly solution IMO.

[https://messages.android.com/](https://messages.android.com/)

~~~
briandear
Good grief. It seems like they are doing everything possible to not make
something as good as Apple Messages. Data chat without a phone number,
interoperability with conventional SMS and the ability to start an instant
FaceTime. And with Group FaceTime, it’s even more compelling. You can even do
audio only or start a real phone call or send a video or audio message, all in
one place. Other than org politics, I can’t understand why Google messaging
services are a convoluted mess. I need a flowchart just to understand it all.

------
nyrulez
It has to hurt somewhere inside Google to kill Allo but not Duo. I honestly
expected the opposite given the original push behind these apps. The problem
with all these messaging experiences is that none of them work well on both
dekstop and mobile. They seem to be optimized one way or the other.

If Google had a Telegram like experience (my favorite messaging app by far)
along with their meetings app, their messaging woes would be over. I'm not
sure what prevents them from creating something like that ? They seem to be
driven by internal priorities/politics and lack a basic ability to see things
from consumers' perspective.

~~~
Eridrus
Duo has at least 10x more installs on the Play store, it's pretty clear that
Duo has succeeded, while Allo has failed.

~~~
niftich
Duo has replaced Hangouts in the GMS bundle of apps that vendors should ship
preloaded [1][2][3][4], while Allo isn't in the list.

[1] [https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/10/07/google-is-
demoting-...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/10/07/google-is-demoting-
hangouts-to-optional-in-the-google-apps-package-for-android-to-be-replaced-by-
duo/) [2] [https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/7/13202866/google-
hangouts-...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/7/13202866/google-hangouts-
allo-duo-core-android-apps) [3]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/72lpsk/how_come_go...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/72lpsk/how_come_google_duo_is_preinstalled_on_new/)
[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_mobile_services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_mobile_services)

------
a-dub
So the business product is named like a consumer product (Hangouts) and the
consumer product is named like a business product (Messages).

I suppose that makes sense in today's upside down world.

~~~
shard972
Quiet, otherwise google will resolve this by launching two new messaging apps.

~~~
markmark
You did it, they heard you, Messages is now Youtube Chat and Hangouts has been
replaced by a confused looking goldfish.

------
niftich
I should take my timeline of Google's chat fumbles [1] and keep it updated. A
lot has happened since. But Allo's stagnation has been known since April 2018
[2], and "classic" Hangouts' decline has long been suspected in light of the
new services also prefixed by the same name.

This post seemed like it might cut the BS and explain what's going on, but
it's tinged with PR platitudes and is unacceptably unclear and nonchalant
about "classic" Hangouts' fate. They're basically saying they'll shut it down
soon but not quite yet.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16886921](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16886921)

------
jdofaz
Hangouts once upon a time was an effective iMessage alternative and Google
totally squandered what they had.

Several years back the Android version of hangouts:

* could message over hangouts, google voice and sms/mms

* could merge those methods into a thread by person

* was a required vendor pre-install app, if you knew someone’s gmail address and they had android you could reliably send a hangouts message

* it was easy to video call people because most people had hangouts installed

Sure it wasn’t as user friendly as iMessage and FaceTime but the base was
there and the ui could have improved to get there.

------
microdrum
What a joke of a blog post, and what a joke of a company. This isn’t “the
latest.” It’s the latest deprecation, and the latest breach of implied
warranty to the consumer.

------
ronreiter
Oh my god - Google really has the worst product management etiquette in the
world.

It’s not hard. Look around you for what works and what doesn’t and copy that.

The post is also confusing and hard to get the bottom line out of it. Just
write “we are killing Allo”.

~~~
markmark
Literally just copy imessage feature for feature, or are they too beholden to
carriers to do that?

------
olegious
So basically - "If you need to do video calling, use Duo. If you need to send
messages Android to Android use Android Messaging. If you need a cross
platform messaging service outside of enterprise use Hango...ooops"

------
yodon
Genuine question here, as I've read both the post and all the comments here
and I still can't figure this out: Does this blog post say google's consumer
text messaging strategy is now "send an email?"

I read the post as saying Messages is for Android consumer text messaging, Duo
for cross-platform consumer video, and Hangouts for enterprise text and video.
That doesn't seem to leave anything for friends doing text chat outside of
Android.

~~~
procinct
I think it's more "send an sms". I could be reading this post wrong though.

~~~
yodon
> "send an sms"

I guess that's better than telling people to fax 8 track tapes, but not by
much

------
devereaux
When google voice was introduced, I ported my phone number. It was nice to use
the service. Before that, I had a grandstream ATA. The service was great.

Now, everyday feels worse. Last month, I was traveling abroad and had more
important things to do than to confirm the cellular number linked to voice was
still mine. So google decided not just to stop redirecting phonecalls, but
also to stop me from calling using the dialer app.

Basically, my "phone privileges" was unilaterally revoked by google because I
did not obey the phone number verification procedure.

I have previously checked companies like callcentric, but it is now one of my
priority. I can't entrust google with my phone service in 2019.

~~~
jdofaz
Callcentric can do sms now if you need that

~~~
devereaux
Interesting, even if they don't have an SMS API yet.

I will have to check again their offer, and see if their native client
improved.

At the moment I mostly use them for fax and SIP trunking.

Even if twilio is good, I'd rather now have everything in one place.

------
Mistri
I'm going to miss Hangouts. Anyone have any good alternatives for free and
anonymous browser-based video calling?

For context, I use a permanent Google Hangouts link under my account and made
a subdomain of my domain redirect to it
([http://partytime.jmistri.com](http://partytime.jmistri.com)). Whenever I
want to talk to someone or have an informal group call, I can tell them to
"hop on partytime". It doesn't require an account and it's a great high-
quality video call on-the-go.

~~~
davidbanham
[https://appear.in/](https://appear.in/)

~~~
bonsai80
I've liked using that in the past. They seem to require a login now.

~~~
davidbanham
Looks like you need a login to create a room, but not to join one.

Someone at some point in the past has created this one, for example:

[https://appear.in/lolbutts](https://appear.in/lolbutts)

And you can join it as a guest.

------
jvagner
which one will be built into gmail in the future?

one of the greatest advantages google has is gmail/hangouts native integration
in the browser. if they lose that, i think a good bit of what makes gmail
attractive goes with it.

i say this as an iOS user.

------
ulfw
It's beyond ridiculous to say 'we failed to gain traction with a free solution
that anybody can install on any Android and iPhone and use it TODAY' and
replace that with 'but we will succeed in gaining traction with a solution
that only runs on a few select phones and need carrier support and where you
never know if the person you are trying to message has a compatible device on
a compatible carrier".

In what world do Google product people live these days?

------
gordon_freeman
I don't understand why can't just Google copy iMessage exactly as it is. They
can just tie up the chat app like Hangouts to the Gmail ID and just build SMS
and Video functionality into it. And make it available by default. So when I
want to SMS, Text, or Video I don't need to "think" which app to use. They can
just get rid of their Messages, Allo, Duo, etc and just stick to one default
messaging app.

------
bubblethink
I think the main reason people use hangouts at all is because everyone has
gmail open all the time, or at least everyone has a gmail account. It's just
laziness for the most part. Not that chat is that hard a problem or that
hangouts is so good. If you have to go to newshinymessenger.google.com at any
point, the advantage will die.

------
m0dest
It's great that they've simplified their story. Totally makes sense now.
Texting app and AV app for consumers, texting app and AV app for teams.

But this leaves a giant hole in their consumer texting product. Have they
given up on making a private, cross-platform texting product for consumers?
Messages seems like it must use an Android phone as the user's primary device
– as SMS requires OS integration and presumably RCS does too.

And neither SMS or RCS are private. Carriers have full visibility to all
messages. That's light-years less secure than the end-to-end encryption
offered by iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal, and even less private than
the former Hangouts. (Say what you will about Google, I'd trust them with my
private messages far more than any pair of cellular carriers.)

------
bad_user
GChat was great because it wasn't locking users into Google's ecosystem.
People from other platforms could chat with you directly because it supported
federation.

With Hangouts they dropped XMPP because supposedly it was preventing them to
innovate and because Microsoft and Facebook weren't playing as nice.

GChat was actually successful and I enjoyed it for a long time. I couldn't be
happier that all of their other attempts are failing.

The problem with Google is that they've lost what made them special back in
the day. What made them great was openness. They were building on top of
standards. And nobody complained that their web properties are optimized for
their own browser.

Nowadays they just want to lock people into their walled garden. Guess that's
what happens when you're no longer the underdog.

------
robbiemitchell
1\. What is the difference between Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet? Why are
they separate products?

2\. What is the difference between Duo and Hangouts?

~~~
codyogden
I can answer #1:

Hangouts Chat is a standalone, text chat-only app (chat.google.com), similar
in functionality to Slack. It will/does have the ability for third-party
developers to create bots, etc.

Hangouts Meet is a pared down video calling interface that is geared
specifically for "one person presenting to others" type of communications.
Both of these (according to this blog) will only be available to G Suite
(enterprise) users.

Why they are separate products? Who knows.

~~~
killjoywashere
> Meet is a pared down video calling interface that is geared specifically for
> "one person presenting to others"

Yeah, no. Meet is the most equal-among-all video conferencing app I've ever
seen. It's ability to promote the speaker to the main window is uncannily
good. It is my go-to, and I use it intercontinental and inter-org.

------
technofiend
One of the absolute _top_ features of Hangouts is indexing chats into your
Gmail search results. And yet here goes Google yet again applying the foot gun
to a useful feature. Do they buy bullets in bulk or something?

~~~
shaklee3
Which, oddly enough, cannot be search on mobile.

------
rmykhajliw
I was a user of hangouts for the last 10 years already since a closed for
public alpha-beta. It was wonderful product for companies, for teams. It was
so easy to create a meeting (because it had an integration with google
calendar) invite everyone, add some people phone number to join the same
conversation. It just worked and it was the best on the market. Then Google
decided to kill this product one by one removing useful features like:
conference call, external plugins, jabber support (jabber allowed to easily
integrate with other corporate stuff). Finally Hangouts transformed from a
must-have-thing into another-chat-app-none-use. I waited a long time, but
there's still NO DESKTOP client. I suppose Google believe in mobile first
world etc. but REALITY says 99% of corporate work's done DESKTOP. And web
based-chat is not a solution at all. Before I can use alternative clients like
psy, it wasn't really convenient but it worked well, until it was killed.
Death of Hangouts was predictable due to lack attention to the detail and
building a wall of ignorance of their users. By the way mobile version
hangouts may built on electron because it's the SLOWEST application on my
iPhone.

~~~
krackers
What's really annoying is that they killed off the one thing that was closest
to a desktop client [the one seen here: [https://github.com/old-hangouts/old-
hangouts-chrome-extensio...](https://github.com/old-hangouts/old-hangouts-
chrome-extension/raw/master/screenshots/chrome.png)] and had unintrusive
windows that could be made floating, or docked/minimzed to the bottom of the
screen. It was incredibly productive.

------
tanilama
Google had lost. Nobody cares or dares use their messaging app any more. Deal
is done.

------
dorfsmay
The last time I used messages it made a point not to let me chose if I wanted
to use SMS vs google own protocol, and I felt I was a weapon for google to
bring more users to their ecosystem.

The last time I used hello and duo they needed either a phone or a smartphone
or both.

For me a messaging system should not require to have a phone number and should
equally well across a range of devices including Linux desktop.

Hangouts and zoom can do it, why would other apps not do it?

~~~
jdofaz
Android Messages is just an SMS/MMS/RCS app, it doesn’t have a google account,
it uses your cellular carrier.

------
uuill
I use Hangouts as a desktop messaging client to communicate with my Mom. She
has a Chromebook, but no Android phone. I also use Hangouts (from my desktop)
to communicate with friends via an ongoing chat stream (with the occasional
video chat).

My use case seems to be falling through the cracks with Google's new approach.
I guess I will be signing my Mom up with a Google Voice number and switching
to Skype for for my video chats.

------
xte
While I'm NOT using anymore Google services I have few sparse world about
Google communication services:

\- GMail (webui and apps), Hangout (webui&app), Drive, ... skyrocketing their
weight in Mb and cpu cycles without addin really anything new in the last few
years. Only if we read "changelogs" on Play store there is nearly anytime
"bugfix and improvements" so nothing that can justify such size change. Only
data mining probably changed.

\- What all users I talk about and me want from a communication service is
communication and convergence, so decision to separate SMS from hangout, to
have a separate app on Android for Hangout calls etc are simply anti-users
features I do not know why are created.

\- Allo/Duo seems more an experiment to test their users stupidity/reaction,
mine was deinstall them the same day I install few days after first
availability announcement.

\- I know Google is changed recently with the disastrous new direction, but I
remark that Google in the past was NOT a philanthropic geek project and it
have made big money on users data as it make today, only real change I see is
that in the past such "data spill" was recompensed by good and effective
services, now services or disappear or remain the same and became pachydermic.

Long story short: dear Alphabet, you are NOT our "alphabet" nor something we
can't live without. Personally I discover many new and nice things leaving
your services apart. So I think in the near future you will start to loose
users and begin suffer "IBM syndrome"/"bureaucratic syndrome" to the last
level, seeing your size you probably do not die quickly but certainly you
start to loose profit.

Super short version: stupidity has increased super-rapidly but not so rapidly,
not at a live someone want.

------
Latteland
Why don't they build one chat system that all of these features work with. And
when they want to try a new feature, put it as an option on the same app. You
don't need to make a new chat app all the time! Pick one, give it a video call
option, let it do sms, let it chat with people with google account, make it
work with business domains hosted by google. Done!

------
Andrex
When and why did Google decide that cloud-first messaging was on the outs, and
device-tied messaging was the new hotness?

Because I thoroughly disagree.

------
pspeter3
I really want to know what is the plan for Project Fi. The Hangouts
integration is one of the best aspects of the service

~~~
amyjess
This. If Fi integration with Hangouts goes away without a replacement, I'm
cancelling my Fi service and switching to Pinger Textfree Web for text
messaging.

------
kentt
"We’ve seen great adoption with both among our G Suite customers."

That's nice. For people I've talked to it would be more accurate to say: we
forced users off their old working solution onto this and they didn't quit
yet.

------
DevKoala
Google is discountinuing Allo next year. I have never been affected by one of
these decisions by Google since I try to stay away from their ecosystem, but I
am confident this is a way to lose user trust.

------
reasonablemann
Lots of money. Lots of ideas. No focus.

------
SomewhatLikely
I clicked through to the Messages Play store page on my one year old Samsung
tablet and it says the app isn't compatible with my device. A replacement for
Hangouts this is not.

------
drEv0
Do any of their offerings provide end to end encryption by default?

------
tempestn
This article is a good summary of all the past and current attempts Google has
made at messaging, for those like me who can't keep up. Outside of maybe
Google employees, is there anyone who can at this point?

[https://www.androidauthority.com/google-messaging-
apps-86784...](https://www.androidauthority.com/google-messaging-apps-867843/)

It really just cements the impression that there's absolutely no consistent
leadership vision over there.

------
hossbeast
From any of these 6 Google apps, I should be able to message/voice as
appropriate, to users on any of the other apps. Protocol over apps. It's the
only way forward.

------
mcintyre1994
> Thanks to partnerships with over 40 carriers and device makers, over 175
> million of you are now using Messages, our messaging app for Android phones,
> every month.

It's amazing how low this is for their market share, compared to iMessage
which so seamlessly integrated SMS and more-than-SMS years ago. Given that
Google do dictate preinstalled apps on Android it's not obvious why they've
never managed to clone the iMessage experience.

------
HHalvi
My takeaway from this post was google saying : We acknowledge that Hangouts,
Duo, Allo exist and we think they were orphaned for too long and we are
adopting them back. Hangouts to me is like Flash, useful but so out of touch
with everyday needs of an ever evolving world and sadly forgotten. I love
Google Photos, Duo as well as Messenger (SMS App) and i hope they don't end up
in Google's Graveyard sometime soon.

------
pasbesoin
You do realize, Google, that most of us are simply not listening to you any
more, on this topic?

Personally, you've burned me too many times, in this domain. I won't be
looking at your products, going forward.

(My last phone came with a Duo icon pre-installed on the home screen. I felt
an active aversion to clicking it; that persisted, and I never have.)

P.S. In retrospect, killing XMPP inter-operability was indeed a harbinger of
the larger sh-t-show.

~~~
kkarakk
i remember when i told someone to try allo/duo they laughed in my face and
said to stick to whatsapp

~~~
pasbesoin
I'm not advocating for them, either. But, you make a good point.

Here, I'm saying I'm off the Google IM merry-go-round.

I'm not turning to the Facebook family for a replacement. I've been backing
away from them, as well; it was friends who dragged me into their products
(Whatsapp, as well as FB proper and Instagram), in the first place.

Between the two, I trust Google more -- with limitations. I might be ok using
their IM products to communicate with friends I can't convince to switch to
something private, for lower risk communications. But... Google's made a
complete sh-t-show out of their IM offers.

So, this is a Google customer -- or, "product" \-- saying to them that one
more launch won't make any difference. Users have been looking for _one_
launch, then _stop_ and just work on that.

You are looking at the wrong end of the stick. The people repeatedly
launching: They're your problem. (Beta and all is fine: I kind of miss the
days when it was genuinely so. _This_ is something else, and it sucks.)

------
mkhpalm
Still sounds like waffling to me. Unless they plan on acting now (dropping
something tomorrow) I suspect these plans can easily change again. Just as
they did through Allo and the last time they tried to differentiate their many
competing solutions to the same problem.

Meanwhile, many people are not interested in waiting around to find or figure
it out. Plenty of clear and concise alternatives.

------
koshak
Google has clearly got internal problems with their product management. It is
a well-known fact that the fewer options you have the easier the choice. Once
you have to choose between similar things with intersecting feature sets you
find yourself in the center of uncomfortable mess. And there is no one to
blame but those who make high level decisions in Google.

------
senectus1
The sooner they replace hangouts with something that is fast and more reliable
the better.

getting tired of the inconsistencies experienced with hangouts.

~~~
navait
Google Meet is the new thing.

------
fabiandesimone
If anyone is looking for a video conferencing alternative to Hangouts, I can't
recommend enough [http://gotalk.to](http://gotalk.to)

I have no affiliation and only came to know about them a couple weeks back
from a recommendation from someone here.

Is phenomenal. It changed the way I work remote.

------
warent
I wonder if what they're doing is trying to refine each individual aspect of
communication as much as possible in various apps so that later they can merge
them all into one massive super-app. So, email, texting, messaging, video
chat, voice, all merged into "Google Human" or something crazy.

------
zodvik
Hangouts Chat is such a botched launch. It is backwards compatible with single
user chat and not group chats. It effectively ensures that people cannot
completely migrate to it. The overhead of keeping 2 apps and getting the same
notification twice was too much - ended up going back to classic Hangouts.

------
bonsai80
I may need to read that mess several more times to understand what they're
doing, but from what I gather if I just want to do video chat with family with
Google stuff, I'll need to use their "Duo" app. Does anyone use that and know
if it also works in a browser (preferably Firefox)?

------
blhack
Forgive me for being a bit daft, but:

What do all of these messenger clients and things bring to the table that
didn't already exist on AOL instant messenger 20 years ago?

Slack seems like (badly) redone IRC. My computer 20 years ago could run mIRC
without issue, and yet my brand new modern macbook pro with 16 gigs of ram
_chokes_ on the slack client. WHY?

Hangouts seems like (badly) redone AIM. For some unbelievable reason, since
about 6 years ago, I can't quite ever figure out how to open or close the
"hangouts" application, and google just keeps making it more confusing.

It started out pretty sane: either use the mobile site in gmail.com, or open
the (beautiful, fast, stable) google talk desktop application. Eventually the
desktop application got deprecated, and I _HAD_ to use chrome, but that was
essentially okay since it had some nice features. It would dock messages to
the bottom of your browser, which was cool.

But at some point, google deprecated that, and won't even let you run the old
version of it anymore. Now you HAVE to either use gmail.com, or some
application that can only seemingly run if chrome (a giant memory hog) is also
running. Oh and for some reason the mobile version of the application wants to
send SMS messages? But like sometimes it's SMS but sometimes it isn't, an it's
not really obvious which is which??!?

All of this messaging stuff is seriously driving me crazy. In what world does
it make sense that _facebook messenger_ is somehow the easiest, most stable
messaging client? WTF? If we could all just agree to start using AIM again,
and if they could get file transfers and voice chat working 100%...my god. It
would be amazing. And imagine how fast it would run on modern hardware!

~~~
elcomet
I really don't agree with you

For Slack / IRC: Slack is a much _easier_ IRC: you don't need a bouncer to
keep your session open, you can easily send files / images / videos, code
snippets, a lot of integrations are baked in and work very well.

For hangouts / AIM: Can you do video chat on AIM ?

Also, for AIM, you still need someone to maintain the server, but I don't
think people are ready to pay for chat. And they But why would a company host
for free a server for an open protocol like AIM ? Why do you think we don't
see more big companies behind it?

Also, I think voice chats work very well with facebook messenger (I don't
remember that it worked that well in the golden era of AIM and MSN messenger).

------
mikehines
Resurrect wave and rule them all

~~~
herewulf
The best part about Wave was that it was/is federated, so your data isn't
completely siloed like basically every other modern app mentioned in this
thread. It's more like e-mail. With sufficient resourcing, it could have
revolutionized communication.

~~~
chii
I heard over the grape vine that wave was killed in political maneuvers of
management (as they deliberately did not build integrations into email for
wave, thus causing adoption issues).

The tech is incredibly good! It had so much potential, and yet...

------
gvand
Fast forward I/O 2019: Google launches a new (or two) chat platform!

------
sam0x17
I use hangouts as my primary communication app with my spouse on desktop and
android, and have since the google talk days. Will this no longer after the
change and if not what is the replacement?

------
scarejunba
WhatsApp is better than any of this nonsense. It has all the features and
more. Hangouts/GoogleTalk was nice. Don’t know what this profusion of crap is
for.

~~~
tubaguy50035
Turn your phone off and send a message to someone from your computer. Oh
wait...

~~~
scarejunba
Huh, I’ve done this before. Don’t know why you’re acting like it’s not a
thing.

~~~
tubaguy50035
You can send messages using whatsapp desktop when your phone is off?

~~~
scarejunba
Oh shi- Dude! You're totally right. I thought you meant figuratively like
"turn your computer off and go out". No, yeah. I get it. iMessage definitely
does have that edge.

~~~
tubaguy50035
Hangouts + Google Voice integration works just fine as well. Which is why I
think most of us in this thread are/were pissed off. It's the only solution
for us right now, with no clear way forward.

------
hackerbabz
Now that messages has a web version, I just don't care about anything else.
That's all I wanted. Send texts from my computer or my phone.

------
paulcarroty
Well, now everyone know Google sucks in privacy 'cause doing business on users
data. I'm not wonder why their ALL messengers failed.

------
sharno
I bet this is a normal A/B test from google and they'd shut one or 2 of these
in a couple of years

------
acd10j
Quick quiz ? Could someone please let me know what is the new brand name of
chat that loads with Gmail Web ?

------
fiatjaf
Google should stop trying to compete in big existing markets and should focus
on creating new things.

------
justtopost
Whoever at google greenlighted this should have to read this entire thread out
loud. Twice.

------
bshoemaker
Perfect example of the organization (different product teams) dictating the
product

------
dbcooper
Just a conplete mess.

~~~
jaimex2
Its turned into a massive joke. They can create amazing machine learning and
AI systems, can't put together a consistent chat app - stuff thats been around
since the beginning of the Internet.

~~~
fencepost
I think that joke must include a dozen highly skilled but poorly socialized
engineers in a conference room completely failing to communicate about
communicating.

I'm just not sure if it's a comedy, a satire or a tragedy.

------
cschep
this feels very early 2000’s microsoft. not a good look.

------
upbeatlinux
Would you like fluff with your PR waffle?

------
V-eHGsd_
as a xoogler, I wish they would've titled this, "an update on allo".

------
gehel
\- @

------
puma1
dumpster fire.

------
runn1ng
"yeah we realize our messenger offer is confusing, but we are too big of a
mess internally so we will keep it confusing. sorry!"

