
Source: Google Hangouts for consumers will be shutting down sometime in 2020 - shaklee3
https://9to5google.com/2018/11/30/google-hangouts-shutting-down/
======
SwellJoe
Google is terrible at this. They have no credible replacement for Hangouts, do
they? I used and loved the old Google Talk. Then they shuttered it and pushed
everyone to Hangouts, which is...the same? Not better, not worse, just a very
similar experience, with maybe better voice/video support. So, now they're
killing this one, too?

Is there a turf battle among teams over chat within Google? I can't think of
any other reason for them to keep killing products that work and have millions
of users with nearly identical products that have no users. So much wasted
energy. How many times do they think people will switch platforms before
switching to something else made by a company that won't kill the product
every few years?

~~~
pathseeker
>Google is terrible at this. They have no credible replacement for Hangouts,
do they? I used and loved the old Google Talk. Then they shuttered it and
pushed everyone to Hangouts, which is...the same? Not better, not worse, just
a very similar experience, with maybe better voice/video support.

It's not even the same. It's worse. I used to be able to use XMPP.

~~~
metildaa
Didn't Google just recently rewrite the infrastructure that supports Hangouts?
IIRC that caused many Google Voice integrations to break, as they ripped out
what was left of their siloed XMPP stack.

Why invest all this labor, only to announce shutdown of Hangouts a few months
later?

~~~
taurath
Because people at google need promotions and launches are one of the few good
ways to get them.

~~~
rixrax
Or maybe they are too busy protesting[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][..] instead
of focusing on product ;-)

Interestingly, before 2017, very few (no?) public news of them employees
walking out or protesting publicly @ Google. It's almost like Sergey going to
the airport to protest opened the floodgates[6]. The Times They Are a-Changin'
(or no good deed goes unpunished...).

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/read-google-employees-
open-l...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/read-google-employees-open-letter-
protesting-project-dragonfly.html) [1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/01/google-
em...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/01/google-employees-
worldwide-begin-walkout-over-allegations-sexual-harassment-inequality-within-
company/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f346e580366b) [2]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-
employe...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-
protest-search-censored-china.html) [3]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-
letter-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-ceo-
pentagon-project.html) [4] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/google-employees-
protest-tru...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/google-employees-protest-
trump.html) [5] [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2017/08/07/542020041...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2017/08/07/542020041/google-grapples-with-fallout-after-employee-slams-
diversity-efforts) [6] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/28/14428262/google-
sergey-br...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/28/14428262/google-sergey-brin)
[7] [https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/google-
employees-s...](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/google-employees-
speak-out-about-government-spying/) [8]
[https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/01/sopa-
blackou...](https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/01/sopa-blackout-
wikipedia-google-wired-join-protest-against-internet-censorship/) [..]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/10/12/whoops-g...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/10/12/whoops-
google-engineer-accidentally-makes-his-plus-sucks-rant-public/#b9697f26cb4f)

~~~
powerslacker
I hate when people just downvote posts that don't align with their politics.

~~~
zapzupnz
This wasn't downvoted because of a lack of political alignment; it was
downvoted because there's absolutely no link.

The post implies a causal link, but there isn't even a correlational one;
Google has been shuttering its own projects only a couple of years after
launch for years, long before the current round of employee protests.

------
ce4
Android Police' headline is spot on:

"Report: Google killing Hangouts in 2020, probably launching 8 new messaging
services in its place" [0].

Mayur Kamat was HO's product manager until 2015 and has posted a few updates
on G+ until he left Google, probably because Hangouts was internally about to
be abandoned. Thats when I realized Hangouts fate and started looking
elsewhere.

I vividly remember his remark around the time of the Hangouts 4.0 release [1]:
"P.S. Unlike what the /r/Android subreddit says, the Hangouts team does come
to work every morning trying to make it better :). Good stuff is coming.":
Alas, it wasn't.

Edit: Maybe adding that name was wrong, my intention was not to blame any
single person.

Fact is: I liked Google Talk (and Hangouts) a lot for its superior abilities
back then: Federation with XMPP, cross device compatibility, superior synch,
possibly reach anyone with a G account, simultaneous login from different
devices, permanent cloud based history, working search. It seemed so easy to
win at that time.

[0] [https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/11/30/report-google-
killi...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/11/30/report-google-killing-
hangouts-in-2020-probably-will-launch-8-new-messaging-services-in-its-place/)

[1]
[https://plus.google.com/+MayurKamat/posts/T1FNqgAWzgE](https://plus.google.com/+MayurKamat/posts/T1FNqgAWzgE)

~~~
bpye
I can believe he and his team wanted to make Hangouts better. Seems nobody
else was on their side though.

~~~
ce4
Absolutely no blaming on him. He was responsible for Microsoft Messenger (if
i'm not mistaken) before and the uncertainty with Google chat products (Allo,
Duo, Hangouts Meet and who knows what else) is continuing without him.

------
lldata
I will never adopt a google product again. g+ may be a total failure hangouts
may be the less popular chat product

But for me and my kids this was the channels we used when they grew up. We
have so much history in our family chat and so many photos shared on google+.

So now they just shut it down and don't even bother to migrate 10 years of my
life to whatever is meant to replace those products.

We are a generation who will leave nothing behind.

~~~
derefr
> We have so much history in our family chat

I don't think any IM chat product has ever _promised_ to keep your history.
They all let you "scroll back" on a best-effort basis, but I don't know of any
IM chat service where the availability of historical messages is part of the
_semantics_ of the service. It's just... not what they're for.

If you want the semantics of "real-time chat with history", what you actually
want is a business collaboration tool, like Slack or its competitors.
Businesses want records of meetings and the ability to dredge up stuff
somebody said once, and are willing to pay for it, so services designed with
business productivity in mind tend to have these semantics.

(And even then, I don't think Slack makes any guarantees that it'll retain the
history of your private DMs, only the history of your public channels.
Exporting an archive of a Slack workspace doesn't get you archives of the DMs.
So it would seem that, even for a business, the semantics of one-to-one
conversations are more ephemeral than not.)

~~~
PunchTornado
Well I can trust Facebook Messenger to always keep my data there and never
delete it.

Which for a chat service is really good.

~~~
exitheone
You can? When did they promise that? What is stopping them from throwing away
history next year?

------
rhizome
Google should claw back bonuses and promotions involved in creating these
services that get assassinated, to get people thinking more long-term. While I
intensely dislike Google's product management, I feel like there might be a
point in their favor that these developers or teams who are driven to only
launch new stuff instead of maintaining and enhancing the old stuff are
creating CS nightmares that can't be refactored, can't be extended, and the
original developers may not even be found there anymore. In other words, to be
fair to Google, this may be a problem of their own incentives.

~~~
SwellJoe
Do you really think the team that made, say, Google Talk, were the ones who
wanted to kill it and push everyone to a different product? I don't know who
made either one, but I would be shocked if the decision maker that pulled the
plug had anything to do with the creation of the product. I, personally, don't
like to kill my babies.

Clawing back bonuses for something out of the control of the engineers seems
like a dystopian nightmare, and any company that tried it would, hopefully,
die a fiery death after an exodus of talent to more reasonable employers.

~~~
rhizome
_Do you really think the team that made, say, Google Talk, were the ones who
wanted to kill it and push everyone to a different product?_

Man, for all the lore and blogging that operates around working at Google, the
skills of people who get hired, plus the first-hand accounts of what it takes
to move up the ladder there, I'd think they'd be able to release things by
people who make their products less killable. Ah, but reality rarely meets the
legend.

This is my point: what if what gets released by Google is just bad software
engineering? Maybe SOLID-deficient. If products are killed because they don't
have the features contained in subsequent iterations of the concepts, how come
the products were not extensible, or capable of being grafted onto something
else? I seem to remember reading about this kind of thing being a big part of
software engineering.

~~~
super-serial
I think the acronym Google always misses out on is KISS (Keep it Simple
Stupid) because no one there is "stupid." If you only hire geniuses, no one
wants to write documentation or do things the boring/easy way that would
create more maintainable software.

Instead everyone there has to use the latest framework or best practices, then
re-engineer things to prove they deserve their top-performer salary.

I think the first Google Hangouts was written in Angular 1? Code rot from
frameworks like that will ensure the product will die in 5 years at a company
like Google. Everyone at Google is a "top-performer" so they want to use the
latest development tools and shiny things and no one wants to upgrade/maintain
5 year old code written in an old framework.

I think a lot of other companies get around this by hiring less than top
performers. Those types of coders will maintain legacy systems because they
don't have as much pride. So I think it's mainly a problem that Google has a
culture of tech elitism, instead of a culture that focuses on user
satisfaction.

~~~
jeltz
I think you are correct but I want to add that most of the top programmers I
have met have had zero issues with doing maintainance work. Just look at many
of the big names in open source if you need some examples.

I think Google's culture is to blame, but this culture is ptobably created
much due to only hiring top performers, rather than other companies who have
to do with a mix of skill levels.

------
com2kid
At one point Hangouts was super easy to use. Send someone a link and they
could join.

The interface was iterated on repeatedly until it got to the point that I
could barely figure out how in the world to invite people to join a Hangout
without having at least a few people run into problems.

It is my belief that Uberconference exists because Google dropped the ball so
badly with Hangouts.

For a brief moment, Hangouts let us live in an amazing future where group
video chats happened spontaneously, and then someone had to iterate.

~~~
nouseforaname
My take: we need to stop incentivizing "innovation" where everything needs to
be rewritten every couple months just so someone can "disrupt" something.

You know what it really is? It's a bunch of product people, all of who want to
be Steve Jobs II, looking at the handful of innovative products Apple made
over the last couple of decades and trying to achieve something similar
results every single quarter.

The problem? We've raised a whole generation of people who think that's not
how you make products people love. We've have a whole generation of people who
focus 100% on the ideation phase and 0% on the nurturing and responding
thoughtfully to user feedback.

This fits into a larger theory I have that basically disruptive startups are
the weeds of the ecosystem, but they aren't old growth trees. Call me old
fashioned but I'm looking forward to the day "disruptive" companies based on
"growth hacking" are replaced by some giant redwood trees that will stand the
test of time as they (slowly) soar into the sky.

~~~
derefr
You're talking like these are the same people ideating and then dropping
products over and over.

No: the people who build each product, even at Google, certainly enter a
"nurturing and responding thoughtfully to user feedback" phase with that
product.

The "problem", if you want to call it that, is that there are always _new_
product people joining the company. And what the heck are _they_ going to do
to get recognized and promoted, if they don't build a new fiefdom to call
their own?

The actual question I have about Google and its business strategy, is why
these new products always seem to _displace_ old products (and their teams),
rather than resulting in the internal equivalent of a merger.

I can see good reason to have four teams building four distinct web VoIP
clients, if one of them is the "flagship" one and three of them are
experiments. I can also imagine one of those "experiments" getting really
popular. But why should that result in the "flagship" dying? Why not just
merge the teams together, and put the team from the "experiment" in charge of
the pooled UX design talent for a new release of the "flagship" client?

~~~
josteink
> there are always new product people joining the company. And what the heck
> are they going to do to get recognized and promoted

Maybe I don’t get it, but it seems weird to me that everyone needs to get
promoted all the time.

Where I live you get employed in a position and most people stay in that
position for most of their career.

You may climb the ranks, but that’s not something everyone does all the time.

~~~
exitheone
At Google, promotion does not change your position, it changes your "Level",
which roughly rewards you for having wider-ranging influence as an engineer.
You don't get promoted to management or anything like that. You stay an
engineer.

Disclaimer: I work at Google.

------
jdoliner
If Google does this it may be the thing that finally convinces me to move my
messaging and phone away from their ecosystem. Hangouts has kinda been the
thing holding my experience together as I adopted Google voice early and a lot
of people only have that number, biggest mistake of my life right there. We'll
see though, talk is cheap and I'm lazy, so most likely I just tolerate the
abuse.

~~~
iscrewyou
If it helps, I moved away from Google Voice a while ago by porting my number.
Went to Verizon, got a new number and got a iPhone running. Then called
Verizon and ported my google voice number onto the new number. Google asked
for $10 for porting out. I happily obliged. My phone number moved over without
any pauses in service. I’ve been using iMessage/SMS ever since and it works
wonders.

Edit: spelling

~~~
jdeibele
I had ported my phone number to Google Voice back when I was using Android
phones. My wife insists on Apple products and eventually I switched to an
iPhone myself. I ported my number back out but set up another Google Voice
number.

Now, if I miss a call, it forwards to the GV number. So I get transcriptions
(via email) which aren't perfect but better than anything else I've seen.

9 times out of 10, I don't need to call the person back. It's a reminder, it's
somebody I'll see later that day, etc.

I do wish that GV would not send me notices that I have voicemail when the
person (or more likely a computer) hung up when they heard voicemail.

The GV number is also useful for things that insist on SMS where I want a
secure number. No way for a person to go into a store and insist on getting my
number transferred to their phone.

~~~
blindseer
There have been no major updates to Voice in a while (thankfully), but lots of
marketing and buzz around Project Fi. I can't help but think that Google will
kill Google Voice in the future. Google Voice is integrated with Hangouts as
well, which means one of those features will go away, assuming the OP is true.
I love using Voice for the same reasons you listed out, but I dread when
Google decide to make a change in this space, I'll be very disappointed.

~~~
judge2020
I don't see Google voice going away since it's the service they use for the
home phone add-on with fiber.

The point of this shutdown (and the Google+ shutdown) is that the services are
going away for consumers, ie. moving to completely focus on GSuite
integration. Google voice is still in the "Additional Google services"
category and doesn't have GSuite integration beyond call-in Hangouts, so I
doubt they will abandon their fiber G Voice customers any time soon.

------
bootlooped
Messaging in the Google ecosystem is probably the biggest mess of any of their
product lines. It should be a case study in business schools.

~~~
PunchTornado
yes, I'll be damned if I ever use Allo, no matter how many ads I receive about
it.

------
mxuribe
Google's behavior with its messaging platforms really boggles my mind. There's
always more to a story sure, and certainly more to why google keeps jumping
around - or perhaps flopping around is a better term here. But honestly, one
would think whatever behind-the-scene reasons would have settled down by now,
eh?

I think google should simply take the plunge and adopt matrix as their
messaging protocol. The protocol provides messaging and telephony. Since -
much like email - matrix is federated, google could even pair matrix server
hosting with their G Suite products. Basically google would be an
organization's email, docs, and now matrix/messaging server provider (in
addition to the other services included in g suite)...I'm not the biggest fan
of google (nor g suite), but i do acknowledge that so many organizations
depend on google for their g suite platform. Also, leveraging - and
contributing to the greater matrix.org effort - the matrix platform would show
the world that google is still happy to collaborate on open source efforts.

...Or, maybe i'm thinking too altruistically?

~~~
zanny
You absolutely are. If Google cared a decade ago they could have strong arm
overhauled XMPP into whatever they wanted. Even Facebook Messenger (which also
used XMPP until I want to say 2016? which is coincidentally when I stopped
ever using Facebook messenger) would have bent to their will.

They simply chose not to, and instead make yet another proprietary non-
federated protocol and practically single handledly fractured what was at the
time turning into a reasonable communication ecosystem where MSM, Facebook
Messenger, and GTalk were all the big games in town but were also all XMPP
compatible.

~~~
mxuribe
Oh wow, i totally forgot about xmpp; you're right! I forgot how i enjoyed
using pidgin client to interact with my gTalk friends.

------
crazygringo
The only thing I still use Hangouts for is ongoing big group chats with old
groups of friends (e.g. little convo every couple weeks), because:

1) Everyone's got a Gmail tab open during the day so they'll see it eventually
but it doesn't bother them immediately like SMS and they don't need to install
anything. (Literally no other service my friends have in common, e.g. some
have Slack and some use Facebook but definitely not everyone.)

2) Group SMS is still a mess -- when you start one with a new group of friends
(e.g. classmates) it just shows as random phone numbers for everyone, nobody
has names until you create contacts for all of them, and there are still
always mysterious problems like some messages only going between iPhones,
messages being duplicated and triplicated, etc...

So if this is true, I guess my old chat groups will just... die... oh well.
Maybe we'll go back to e-mail, but it doesn't feel as fun.

~~~
crooked-v
You could set up a Discord, maybe. It means another thing to keep an eye on,
but the Discord client is pretty good and has deeply configurable push
notifications.

~~~
ravenstine
2019: We are happy to announce our joining of forces with Discord! It's our
hope that, together, we can create a more cohesive Google experience.

2022: All good things must come to an end! It was a wild ride, but sadly, we
will be closing Discord to make way for a more cohesive Google experience.

------
Upvoter33
What's really funny about this is that video conferencing during meetings is
_really good_ inside of google. They have a winner product on their hands and
don't know how to get it to businesses where they would make tons of money. So
amazingly bad at turning innovation into product.

~~~
codemac
They offer it on their website: [https://gsuite.google.com/products/hangouts-
meet-hardware/](https://gsuite.google.com/products/hangouts-meet-hardware/)

But the prices are steep compared to what a lot of small to medium businesses
are willing to pay for when they think they can just use their laptops.

~~~
jpatokal
The link above is for the hardware version. If you just want the software, you
can use Hangouts Meet, which is free to install and also included in G Suite.

Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on Hangouts.

~~~
taytus
Hangouts meet is different than just hangouts? Sorry for the silly question
but I honestly have no idea anymore.

~~~
guu
Yes, “hangouts meet” and “hangouts chat” are separate apps for gsuite
customers.

For consumers there is the “hangouts” app which this article is about.

------
jpeeler
I've often gone out of my way to encourage people who want to message me to
use hangouts in order to have a better chatting experience (versus SMS). And
since I have Google Fi, the hangouts integration was perfect such that people
who I couldn't convince to use hangouts would text me and I'd still have all
the nice message synchronization features in the same app (which as far as I
know nothing else offers - a web based client that's not dependent on the
phone being available for receiving SMS). All that to say, I'll be sad to lose
such nice integration with SMS. Although I can see Google still providing
hangouts to Google Fi customers, I think it's probably time to jump ship at
this point.

Does anybody know if Matrix supports e2e encrypted chat yet? I don't really
follow the project closely, but if this issue is up to date then it's not
quite there yet: [https://github.com/vector-im/riot-
web/issues/6779](https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/6779). I realize
that bug is for the web client, but I'd feel better anyway knowing one of the
biggest clients is using the feature.

------
cwyers
There was a point a few years ago when most of my IMing was on Google. Now
it's largely moved to Facebook and WhatsApp. So, maybe this is the right
decision, but Google had what feels to me like a decisive market lead at one
point that they frittered away because they couldn't manage a consistent
strategy on messaging. And I guess I need to start trying to find the few
stragglers I talk to through Hangouts on other messenger services.

~~~
basch
aol - aim

yahoo - yahoo messenger

microsoft - msn, skype

google - talk, voice, hangouts

basically every one took too long to adapt to either web or mobile.

~~~
cwyers
Yes, well, I can understand why mobile was hard on AOL. I have a harder time
understanding why the maker of the most popular mobile platform couldn't get
their messaging story straight.

------
sciurus
Originally Hangouts looked Google's answer to Apple's iMessage. You could send
and receive messages via Hangouts or SMS within the same Android app. You
could use Hangouts on your computer via Gmail or a standalone app.

Then a few years ago they started pushing you to use SMS from a separate app,
and eventually removed SMS functionality from the Hangouts Android app
altogether.

Then they launched Allo and pushed it for consumers, but from all accounts it
flopped miserably.

Now they're apparently going to push an evolution of SMS (RCS) as their
consumer chat product. I'm wonder how they plan to integrate that on desktop.

Personal anecdote: My wife and I have kept using Hangouts to communicate with
each other out of inertia. On Android it's seemed stagnant for ages, but it's
simple and works reliably. For family and friends we're using a mix of SMS and
Facebook Messenger due to their preferences. Both of those are annoying,
although in different ways. I suppose if consumer Hangouts dies we'll have to
look at Whatsapp, Signal, etc. and see what's best.

~~~
lowercased
> On Android it's seemed stagnant for ages, but it's simple and works
> reliably.

"stagnant" implies it _should_ be changing, but then you say "it works
reliably". No changes for a year is 'rock solid' and 'stable', not 'needs an
iteration push next month!'.

~~~
sciurus
It works reliably, but there's room for improvement. Two examples: Video call
quality is noticably worse than Google Duo. Unlike SMS, Google Assistant can't
read my Hangouts messages to me.

~~~
lowercased
I realized there's a middle ground, of course, after posting. I'm not a
regular android user, but understand the 'room for improvement' line of
thought for software in general. However, given how much things generally go
downhill when new versions are released, 'improvements' in a real sense are
often hard to come by. Often, I much prefer my stagnant releases vs watching
features I use go away, or UI changes hide my normal workflows in 'upgrades'.

------
int_19h
IM in general is such a mess.

All I really want is to have a single ID that people can use to text me from
any device they might have (without having to install a special app, because
they won't do it just for me), and that I can receive on any device that I
have. We did this for email decades ago; why is IM not there yet?

~~~
dasil003
Because email was not designed by capitalists.

~~~
tomcam
Soviets or Chinese? I keep forgetting which non-capitalists designed email.

~~~
pers0n
He just means it wasn’t designed for the purpose or future hope of profits

------
butterandguns
So what does this mean for Google Voice and Google Fi users? All my SMS runs
through Hangouts.

~~~
xtagon
With Google Voice + Hangouts you can also answer phone calls from a desktop
computer/laptop very easily. I'll miss that.

~~~
Marsymars
I recently looked into ways to do this outside of the US. Seems to be
basically impossible other than using an iPhone/Mac with Continuity. :(

~~~
QuicksilverJohn
No, Hangouts works great for this outside of the US. I use it in New Zealand
all the time.

~~~
4ad
IFF you have a GV number, which is US-only.

------
garysahota93
Suggestion of the day: They should integrate Google Voice + Android Messages /
RCS to make a true iMessage competitor (with encryption / web sync / etc) AND
THEN replace all references of _consumer_ Hangouts/Messaging with this new
service. Here's where they could integrate it:

-Gmail (as either the hangouts widget replacement or a new Gmail Addon) -Google Maps (so that any conversations you have show up in your main messages app too) -YouTube (why did they even make YouTube Messages? Put this in there so those messages show up in this unified app) -Google Sheets/Docs/Slides (so all comments / conversations can then be seen & referenced in this unified app) -Google Assistant Conversations (so you can see what you've written, but also have the conversation handy - similar, but more streamlined, to how it was/is in Allo) -Duo (so it's tightly integrated & conversations just magically work - similar to FaceTime/iMessage) -Google One (so all customer support conversations can also be bundled & seen in one unified view) -Hangouts Chat / Hangouts Meet (so if you use those services, they have a channel in this app too) -Anywhere else you use a Google service to type things!

This would be the ULTIMATE messaging app. Here, I'll even throw in ways to
monetize (so that it can live on forever):

-You have your main chats, but also all these premium "channels"/"add-ons" (like the ones above) that outside business could integrate into within this app. Charge them similar to how WhatsApp is doing it -Create an add-on store for stickers/fonts/themes (similar to FB Messenger) but integrate into Play store for more revenue) -Sell this service to GSuite customers as a call center / messaging-based customer support service -Create an SMS api for developers and charge for its use (like Twilio and company)

No ads. No subscription service (though I'd happily pay $1 per year - which at
their scale could be billions). No hassle. No fragmentation. No problems.
World hunger solved

/end rant

P.S. - If anyone wants to make this service, I'd happily co-found a company to
do exactly this.

------
chocolatebunny
Anyone know of a good alternative for group chat that doesn't tie your account
to your phone#?

My friends and I were joking about going back to icq since web.icq.com still
works.

~~~
mxuribe
See matrix.org. Matrix is the protocol, but there are numerous server and
client implementations, with riot.im being the most popular client and
matrix.org being the most popular server.

~~~
gomox
Riot.im makes vim's UX seem intuitive.

------
f055
GOGON: Get off Google, now. :P

Weird things are going to happen if Google were to shrink: paid gmail, premium
search, subscription navigation in maps, lock screen ads in android, and hard
monetisation of user data. A giant doesn’t go away without a fight, but Google
users are not its customers, just data in its products, so...

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lwansbrough
Big surprise! Another useful Google service gets put down. Why even bother
launching products if you’re just gonna kill them after 2 years?

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timwis
What about Hangouts calling (inbound/outbound) with your Google voice number?
I'm moving from the US to the UK next month and was hoping to maintain my US
number by porting it to Google Voice and using Hangouts calls. Anyone know an
alternative?

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irrational
Google is shutting down a product? That is so shocking. To be honest, this is
the exact reason we didn't go with Google Cloud. We have zero trust that they
won't just shut it off one day, no matter what they might claim.

I do use google mail and google docs, but I always make sure I have anything
important saved in a separate location so I'm prepared when these products are
inevitably shut off.

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zanny
I'll get to my real pain point - anyone know of a replacement VOIP solution
like Hangouts dialer that isn't subscription based? I've been giving my
Hangouts number to people forever because its more convenient to have every
device I have ring when someone uses the old PSTN but its not worth a
recurring bill to me.

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phreack
At this point, what do Googlers even use to chat internally? Slack? Skype?

~~~
amerine
My experience so far in 2018 is they communicate via gmail messages and gdoc
comments

~~~
anoncoward111
"Man, if only we worked for a large software conglomerate... then we wouldn't
have to use Cisco phones or communicate through Excel documents!"

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MrStonedOne
I doubt this, as hangouts is integrated deeply into google fi, such that all
sms messages between google fi users just go thru hangouts and hangouts is
also used to send out going texts.

Hangouts also powers google fi's wifi calling.

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JorgeGT
Ask HN: any other IM client that has Hangout's transparent UI for desktops? I
really like how unobtrusive it is.

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gigatexal
Why do they insist on putting out useful products only to cancel them? Wtf is
wrong with them?

~~~
cronix
I'm not sure, but I've noticed the result is that I'm consciously using fewer
and fewer google services. The more they keep doing this (just abandoning
products, or charging astronomically more for them), the less likely I am to
use their other services - or new ones, because I don't trust that they'll be
around tomorrow. If you continuously show someone you're not stable or
reliable, eventually they'll take the hint and believe you. I hope that's what
they're going for because it's working. This year there's just been a lot of
this with Inbox, G+, Maps increases, and now Hangouts.

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wtmt
Looks like Google is shutting down most of the consumer focused platforms
where someone in the organization believes it’s expensive and not making money
like selling ads does.

I’m confident on Gmail and Maps staying around for the long term. The rest of
the consumer side platforms could be removed or replaced (yet again).

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jakelarkin
this is basically what happens when BigTechCorp leaves its product decisions
to the competitive empire building machinations of middle managers with 4 year
vesting

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sandyhatches
I use Hangouts every single day, all day. It's the only app that let's me both
chat and SMS from any device I have. I'll miss it very much when it's gone, as
there is simply no replacement :/

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codyogden
Add it to the list. killedbygoogle.com

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anoncoward111
Why? It's one of the best messaging platforms out there. Everyone I know has
an email account. It is easier to reach me by gmail (and thus hangouts) than
it is to reach me by phone, because my phone has bad service.

Why on earth would they kill one of their best and most popular services? I
don't use FB messenger at all, whatsapp reveals my phone number, Skype is an
ABSOLUTE joke, and not everyone has Line, Viber, Telegram and so on.

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elvirs
Google needs to hire Satya Nadella as the CEO.

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chris_wot
What is it replaced with?

~~~
FactolSarin
Allo, which is already being abandoned itself, never having gained the
traction of Hangouts. Ultimately, it looks like Google is giving up in favor
of RCS (the rich SMS protocol).

~~~
londons_explore
RCS will never see widespread use.

It's too tied to phone numbers and mobile devices (have fun getting those RCS
messages on your tablet or laptop or when you have no 4G).

It's also too tied to carriers, who might introduce weird billing "RCS
messages to abroad cost $$$$". Its also without any end to end encryption, and
seems to have an odd 1 or 2 second delay delivering messages which means truly
interactive conversations aren't really possible.

Each of those things alone makes it less attractive to one usergroup.
Together, I'd guess it'll never see widespread use.

~~~
smt88
I don't know anyone outside of tech who would care about RCS being tied to
phone numbers, being offered through the carrier, or having a delay.

Most people I know (US perspective of course) chat mostly on iMessage and SMS.
They'd love RCS.

~~~
londons_explore
All of Europe uses Whatsapp and Messenger, with a few fringe countries and
groups using Line, Telegram, SMS, Twitter DM's and instagram.

SMS has a delay of 5+ seconds in most of Europe, so isn't really good for
rapid fire conversations. Many phones aren't correctly configured for MMS
(picture messages) either, and some networks don't yet support emoji.

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xte
Tying to leave Google as much as I can (hoping for Purism phone or something
else to ditch Android, web part already done) I do not feel the loss...

The real problem is that SFLPhone (now Ring) lost somewhat its way and Jitsi
substantially do the same...

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ttty
I don't know about you but I hated it. Takes ages to open up and is buggy. I
have a S8 so you can't say that hardware is a problem. Just low quality
Android app.

I still use it because has good prices when calling abroad.

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mjevans
As long as whatever still works and lets me keep those numbers I paid to port
in to Google Voice years ago and park so friends and family could forever
reach me at the same bloody phone number irrespective of any other BS...

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monksy
Maybe someone serious can improve XMPP and deploy that.

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belltaco
So they're willing to keep Gmail which isn't cheap to host and develop free
but want to shutdown Google Chat?

It feels like this is because Gmail brings in the moolah by making the user to
sign in to Google.com, which means all their searches in other browser windows
and tabs are tracked to that account leading to user data being collected to
be targeted by advertisers.

But they don't want to monetize chat data, either because it's not very useful
or because of potential backlash, thus they can shut it down to save costs.

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clickme_zsh
Google needs to focus on their current trend of killing their apps/services.
It is surely affecting brand image and value.

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kenhwang
Good thing they're giving a year's notice similar to their enterprise SLAs,
right?

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cordite
What will happen to Google voice texting through hangouts?

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nwellinghoff
Can we just all go back to irc already...jezzzz

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chappi42
You don't pay - what do you expect?

Use Threema, Signal or Telegram; likely a more sustainable experience.

~~~
pmlnr
You don't pay for those either, what makes you think it will be around in a
few years?

Go XMPP, Matrix, SIP - you can self-host these under your own domain, or
actually pay for service, or with plain old SMS.

~~~
chappi42
Threema is a paid app.

Signal (Telegram) is open source and the chat is a core service for their
providers. I.e. more important than Hangout for Google.

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angel_j
LOL, most of the replies here are about how google fucked up, and sucks at
stuff, yet this here HN Frontihspost is a dead-ass PR campaign for their paid
work/collaboration tools; hangouts has probably been a technical success, so
it's going business class only.

we use [https://talky.io/](https://talky.io/)

