Ask HN: Anyone else loving the new Google Chat?

[uncomplexity_]

So basically I got frustrated with other messaging platforms:

- on messenger, it's full of ads and unnecessary features like filters on calls, and the video chat is bad quality. message is now unsearchable.

- on whatsapp, same thing, it's now also unsearchable.

- on telegram, great ux and its strength lies in its bot api but i had a hard time signing up with new accounts (it bans aggressively now).

- on slack, good contender, but for work only, not personal stuff.

telegram used to be my bias but it started getting enshitified in the past three years since they started monetizing it aggressively.

on twitter / x, it's not searchable too, it crashes on my android. but i like how it's monetized in a way that it makes me pay $1 monthly to prove im not a bot, and i can pay extra to remove all ads and have a smooth xp.

I discovered that Google Chat is now integrated in the Gmail app and I am loving it because:

- the chat is smooth and searchable (very very important)

- the audio / video quality is better.

- can send images, videos, gifs, etc.

- almost everyone has a gmail anyway so I can just easily chat them up.

- it's viewable on web and mobile.

- the notifications just works.

- it's free, we bought google workspace and surprised it's a part of it already, and i can chat with other people who are gmail users.

Anyone with similar exp? If not, what do you use and why?

[solardev]

Don't get too attached to it... it's a running joke that they make a new chat platform every other year. There's already been Talk, Voice, Buzz, Plus, Chat, Wave, Spaces, Currents, Hangouts, Meet, Hangouts Chat, Hangouts Meet, Hangouts again, Allo, Duo, Messages, RCS, Chat again... lol.

There's only one thing on the internet that decays faster than Javascript frameworks, and that's Google chat apps.

[0_____0 → solardev]

I have one friend who uses Google Chat and it's always a bit of a shuffle to figure out where I have to message him back on. It's not in gmail's android apl for me anymore although it used to be (Meet is there). Meet is also a separate app in addition to being in the gmail app. Chat is the app on Android but I think I might actually access chat through Gmail on desktop.

[uncomplexity_ → solardev]

haha here comes the anxiety

i think this one will stick around longer though, i noticed that they have a separate app Google Chat, but now the Gmail app have it baked in next to the inbox.

pretty sure there's a massive use case too, whenever I do interviews a decent fraction of companies insist for google meet instead of zoom etc

- https://killedbygoogle.com/

- https://gcemetery.co/

- https://killedby.tech/google/

[solardev → uncomplexity_]

Prob cuz they're cheap and it comes with Workspace.

The Gmail chat inside Gmail isn't new, BTW. It's been there for like a decade or longer, but it keeps changing and losing compatibility with other services. I wouldn't rely on it for anything long term.

[vunderba]

"I discovered that Google Chat is now integrated in the Gmail app"

Google Chat (or at least some variation of it) has been available in Gmail for 10+ YEARS. At the time I had a pixel phone, and it seamlessly integrated regular GChat with SMS, so they were all searchable.

Then they proceeded to completely donk it up and half of my old records disappeared overnight. Fortunately I make regular use of the "Google Takeout" service so I still have the old XML backups of the conversations.

[falcor84]

I absolutely loved Google's chat in Gmail when it first came out almost 20 years ago, and if they had kept it running, I'm almost 100% sure I'd still be all over it, but the fact that they removed it and keep changing their approach every couple of years just means that I can't trust them with my conversations. I'll check it again if it's still around in a decade.

[uncomplexity_ → falcor84]

it's now in the latest Gmail app next to the inbox!

on Gmail web it's beside the inbox too!

[russellbeattie]

To each their own, but my peer group's preferred chat app nowadays is Signal. It's clean, does what it's supposed to do, is nominally open source, encrypted and isn't owned by Big Tech or Russians. Big thumbs up from me.

[kazinator]

No! I just started using it because of new job.

There appears to be no way to disable the misfeature of Enter dispatching your draft message into the channel. (Short of monkey patching the logic with some client side script tweak thing?)

When you let coders decide messaging UX, make sure some of them are multi-paragraph communicators, not just one liner shooters-from-the-hip.

I'm going to have to look into this client-side hack because I am going to have to use this daily, and it is a nonstarter.

You know what would be cool: a browser extension that could somehow do this for any edit window (that you pick with an object picker like in uBlock Origin). The extension would interpose itself into the input handling for that object and perhaps do something like convert Enter to Shift Enter, and vice versa. Or just glboally?

Could this point to the solution?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45869813/is-there-a-way-...

[sabbaticaldev]

> Anyone with similar exp? If not, what do you use and why?

how old are you?

[muddassirhq]

Aaah, I love to use it, but my friends and colleagues don't now that it even exist. So I am unable to use it.

[Maledictus]

it is not end to end encrypted, so that's a hard no for me.