
Most of the Google Hangouts API is being killed on April 25th - werediver
https://www.xda-developers.com/most-of-the-google-hangouts-api-is-being-killed-on-april-25th/
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Klathmon
It seems many of the comments here read this like hangouts is being killed.

The hangouts API was mostly for little widgets and extensions that would
running the video chat platform on desktop only.

They haven't worked on the new UI for almost 6 months now, they never worked
on mobile, and you could count the number of apps on 2 hands.

The only one I ever used was a thing where you could draw on a friend's face
during a video call, and even that was a one time thing.

Hangouts isn't being shutdown, they aren't gutting it's functionality, they
are simplifying the system.

~~~
xiaoma
Some companies have used it for language tutoring. There are a lot of things a
language learner with a keyboard and mouse can productively do during a video
chat that isn't built into hangouts, e.g. looking up words, saving vocab
items, etc... And that's just one use case.

What this change will do is chop off those offering free services at the knees
and drive the premium services to Twilio, etc.

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automatwon
_Some companies have used it for language tutoring... What this change will do
is chop off those offering free services at the knees and drive the premium
services to Twilio, etc._

Google's a business. Why does it have the responsibility to pickup the tab for
these businesses?

~~~
xiaoma
Aside from the fact that education has second order effects that powerfully
benefit humanity as whole, good will is a boon for companies. The cost of
running hangouts (which is essentially P2P) is a rounding error for Google.
Why shut down those who are literally providing education for free?

Every time Google does something like this, it becomes a bit less beloved by
consumers, loses a bit more of that halo it had in the early 2000s and finds
itself having a bit harder time with regulators in the future.

In Google's IPO filing:

 _" We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better
place. With our products, Google connects people and information all around
the world for free. We are adding other powerful services such as Gmail that
provides an efficient one gigabyte Gmail account for free. By releasing
services for free, we hope to help bridge the digital divide."_

 _" We believe that our user focus is the foundation of our success to date.
We also believe that this focus is critical for the creation of long-term
value. We do not intend to compromise our user focus for short-term economic
gain."_

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majc2
Who's surprised? Google has a rep for killing things off now - I think it
damages their brand; but I have to assume they've thought about this and
judged that its still worth it.

~~~
samfisher83
They have been doing this forever it hasn't hurt their brand too much.

~~~
xiaoma
Google's brand has plummeted since the era of blogger/google reader/google
talk, etc.

It's just that they have powerful monopolies that fund pretty much anything
they want to do and there are powerful network/lock-in effects for email,
documents, calendars, chat, mobile app sales, etc and even YouTube.

You're free to join a different chat network but none of your friends are
there. You can change to another calendar provider but you'll still have on in
gmail and people will share things to it. You can upload your video to Vimeo,
but it won't have anywhere near the ability to attract traffic as it would on
YouTube and it probably won't do as well in search results. Feel free to write
an app for non-Google Android users, but not many people will buy it or even
encounter it (unless you're in a market like China and are on a local
monopoly's platform).

Google has hurt their brand. They're just not that dependent on people liking
them anymore. In a lot of ways it's like Microsoft was 20 years ago.

~~~
automatwon
_Feel free to write an app for non-Google Android users, but not many people
will buy it or even encounter it_

iOS apps generate more revenue than Android

[http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-app-store-revenue-
per-u...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-app-store-revenue-per-user-
versus-android-2016-7)

~~~
jeeva
> non-Google Android users

I suspect he means Android-without-Play-store, rather than phone-without-
Android.

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hobarrera
Google has _so many_ chat clients right no: Allo, Duo, Hangouts, and I also
just discovered that they have Google Messenger (which I've yet so see).

I'm not sure what their strategy is, but they seem to be flodding the market
with apps that nobody uses. Meanwhile, a few [other] 2-3 apps seem to be used
90% of the time.

Their best shot at this point, IMHO, is to buy some [very popular] existing
product, and merge all their chat apps into that one.

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true_religion
I hope this means that both Allo and Duo will be getting desktop app releases.

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rmykhajliw
Hangouts awesome app. It was my replacement for Skype for the last 7 years i
suppose, since I had access to close beta. It's really great app. But There
was a few issue with cpu/battery consumption for Hangouts. I did not
understand why Google avoided development optimized desktop app and sticked
with desktop only app then chrome extension only. It's crazy wrong, because
video call drains my macbook battery unbelievable fast. Anyway Hangouts is
great for companies/corporate chats, I wish to have conference call integrated
inside as it was in beginning with user-conference .

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tym0
I doubt they'll kill it completely, it is widely used as office messenger in
companies that use Google Apps. In my company all the engineers use slack but
everyone else uses hangouts.

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HugoDaniel
Is there good alternatives to google hangouts ? That preferably works with
gmail contacts and/or phone contacts in a native desktop app (i.e. not with an
electron style app).

~~~
quanticle
I was interviewed a couple times using [http://appear.in](http://appear.in).
It worked pretty well both times I used it. I didn't have any problems with
video or screen sharing.

~~~
hobarrera
appear.in is _excelent_ for ad-hoc videocalls (especially with peolpe you
don't have in your everyday chat client), but it's not very useful for people
you frequently contact, or for quickly upgrading a text-chat into a videocall.

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aries1980
How does this affect 3rd-party chat clients such as Pidgin?

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zehemer
I wonder what this would mean for hangups:

[https://github.com/tdryer/hangups](https://github.com/tdryer/hangups)

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ansy
I wish Google would make Hangouts more Slack-like. Especially if they want to
target the enterprise. It seems they really just need to add the concept of
chat rooms.

~~~
Klathmon
It has them, but not with the same UX that Slack does.

You can create what would be a "group conversation" in slack, then add more
people and rename it to whatever you want.

