Here's what would work. Chat that just works with gmail. Not another chat app. Chat with gmail. Is the other person online? Message is immediately delivered. Is the other person not online? Message is queued. ID of another person? Their email address or a phone number. That's it. Just
I don’t think I’d like that. The type of messages I leave with chat and the type of messages I leave with email are characteristically different. I suspect I’m not alone here.
With instant messaging I tend to not leave long messages until I’m in contact with someone, and in messaging it’s more kosher to send quick one 1-word responses, even breaking replies into several messages to have some “timing” to my communications, similar to speech.
With emails I assume the person may not get them for a while, and I tend to leave longer paragraphs, and assume a response timeline of a few hours or even days.
Messages “falling back” to email, or emails turning into messages doesn’t seem like it would work to well with most people’s communication expectations IME.
You misunderstood. Messaging/email should be the same application, accessing the same contact list because the odds are the people that you are communicating with using messaging are the people you communicate with using email.
It makes no sense to have to run another application to communicate with someone just because it is on a phone. Think of it as the hangout in Gmail on the web, except if Hangout actually just worked ( such as not said the message was delivered when it was not or said the message has not been delivered yet when it was ).
Here's what would work. Chat that just works with gmail. Not another chat app. Chat with gmail. Is the other person online? Message is immediately delivered. Is the other person not online? Message is queued. ID of another person? Their email address or a phone number. That's it. Just
(a) make it actually work
(b) make it not lose messages