
Google Plans New, Smarter Messaging App - prostoalex
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/google-plans-new-smarter-messaging-app-1450816899-lMyQjAxMTA1OTI5MjUyMDI5Wj
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viraptor
"WeChat, for instance, lets users shop, pay bills and book appointments."

Does anyone have experience with it? Is it actually useful, or just a gimmick?

And I have to point out that there is a protocol which is open, supports both
users and services with registration, supports federation, and supports
arbitrary payloads, making it a great solution for a chat bot platform... But
of course everyone dropped xmpp and now will have to reinvent it.

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nip
An excellent read about WeChat from a16z: [http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-
china-mobile-first/](http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/)

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autotravis
"Google is building a new mobile-messaging service that taps its artificial
intelligence know-how and so-called chatbot technology to try to catch up with
rivals..."

Or they could, you know, fix notifications in Android's Hangouts app.

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tw04
Or, you know, bring back off the record conversations. The ability to delete
individual messages/pictures out of conversations. Encrypt conversations by
default, and stop requiring chrome for the desktop apps to work.

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ericfrederich
Or, you know, make video calls in HangOuts not suck.

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toomuchtodo
It's hilarious because everyone in this sub-thread is correct. Its why I moved
to an iPhone 6 and use iMessages and Facetime for all of my
messaging/communications needs.

No fan boy, just someone who likes things to work when I need it. Its like
Google _doesn 't care at all_ that the experience sucks.

~~~
unsignedint
The biggest problem of that is that it only works if you can assume everyone
in your contact list uses iOS. How do you deal with that problem? (I'm just
curious...)

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toomuchtodo
Everyone in my immediate family, as well as my colleagues and my immediate
friends have iPhones. Network effects I guess.

I only have two or three friends without iPhones. We simply text or call back
and forth.

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s3r3nity
This -- I recently switched to Android thinking "iPhones are luxury phones.
Surely a bunch of my friends use Android." Was immediately known as "Green
Bubbles" guys for a few weeks by family and friends.

~~~
Ntrails
But even the green bubble solution is "perfect". One app. One experience. I
want to message this person, through the internet for free if possible and if
not - just send it as a text. I don't want 4 apps on my phone to do the same
thing, and that's why I don't see the point in being an also-ran

~~~
unsignedint
Hah, I didn't even get "green bubbles" reference until I came back here just
now :-) (I'm not an iOS user.)

Some of the downside about text is that it often shows unpredictable behavior,
especially when it involves going over carrier's gateway to other networks, or
involving some non-ordinary systems like Google Voice. Though, it seems to be
improving now, but I used to see anything from garbled messages to complete
silence, and it often exhibited different behavior between combinations of
different sender and receiver. (For instance A, and B in same network might
have worked OK, but A to some user in another network being able to receive,
or sometimes being able to receive one way, but corrupts for the other way
around, etc.)

Google Voice until recently (maybe a year ago?) or so, couldn't do any group
MMS at all, and would simply get ignored. One blamed would be one who deviates
from standards, but my most pet peeve of SMS/MMS is that it offers very little
to no error indications when something goes wrong.

I actually manage a volunteer team of 30 or so with varying types of devices,
where one to many communication is highly needed, and I find messaging
solution very complicated problem to solve. (And yes, I'm likely resort to
having like 2 to 3 apps to get it done...)

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orange_county
"Users will be able to text friends or a chatbot, which will scour the Web and
other sources for information to answer a question"

So instead of typing this in google, you would send a message to a chatbot? I
always found chat bots gimmicky, just like Siri. It's great as a novelty,
nothing else..

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dragonwriter
> So instead of typing this in google, you would send a message to a chatbot?

How is typing something in Google different than sending it to a bot, other
than currently you use different input boxes to do it? To me, this sounds like
just unifying the messaging and search interfaces into one DWIM interface, and
isn't really surprising given how much Google has been trying to merge
_everything_ into a shared DWIM interface.

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lindseya
I was surprised to read that "Google has struggled to create such network
effects with both Hangouts and Messenger." At my university, all the student
groups that I have worked on use Google docs, Messenger, and Hangouts to
coordinate. We don't use Messenger a lot, only when we are online working on a
document together, but we do use Hangouts weekly. For us, Google is for group
productivity (sort of like Slack), but I couldn't see using Google Messenger
for communicating with friends or asking questions to a chat bot. I wonder who
their target audience is for this new product. Any ideas?

~~~
unsignedint
From the standpoint of someone who had to ask people to use common messenger
among a team of people with varying team in the field operation at an event,
biggest issue I have seen with Google Hangouts (I guess this also applies to
Facebook in that respect as well) is that there seems to be a bit of
reluctance from people when they are required signing up to more "blanket"
service, in this case, Google.

I guess for some who do not use other Google services (especially when they
don't use Gmail, YouTube, etc.) either don't want set up or show high
resistance in setting up a new account with Google.

Some privacy concern aside, many of those integrated services works great
especially when they are used effectively, but I think the flip side is that
those services tend to be "too heavy" for some people who just want to use it
as a messenger and nothing else. (Actually, I wish they had an option like
that.)

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kennydude
I remember when Google Talk was a thing and actually worked well.

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s3r3nity
When I first read this, I thought "Are they building a Slack competitor?" And
then I got excited over having the power of Google and my gmail within a
Slack-like tool and interface.

Then I was disappointed that it's an app that is just an IRC bot that makes
Google searches.

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majc2
Who'd use it? They'll just kill it off in 2 years anyway.

