We’re winding down Google Talk

https://support.google.com/talk/?hl=en

by tech234a • 4 years ago

216 218 4 years ago

support.google.com

al_borland6• 4 years ago

Google's history with messaging services has been a mess. I don't see how they will ever get anywhere if they are always starting over. I have very little interest in anything Google makes in this space as a result.

Google Talk, Chat, Meet, Duo, Messages, Hangouts.... I'm sure Im missing some. It's like they don't have any idea where they want to go and need to make a whole new service every time they have an idea, instead of just adding a feature to their existing service.

thefourthchime• 4 years ago

It's like 12 or 13. I've never seen a company fail this much at something.. They need to create a Razzie just to give it to google for their total incompetence at chat.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...

dane-pgp• 4 years ago

That's a very comprehensive article, thank you, but I'm reminded of an earlier one from 2018 with the amusing title:

"Google to simplify messaging strategy, will support only five messaging apps"

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/google-promises-to-s...

orthoxerox• 4 years ago

I remember reading this article and thinking, "okay, this is already absurd, things can't get any worse" and then there's another chat engine Google once used to have. And another. And it keeps going on.

imglorp• 4 years ago

It's only failing if you define that as "not dominating the planet's chat", which has a bunch of externalities. Several of their chat products were decent and companies were able to run all their internal meeting rooms off them.

What IS a failure is the thrash within that whole set of products. Adoption of new users via network effect is the activation energy and every flipflop halves their potential new market.

If they had simply stayed on, say, hangouts and kept improving it, they would keep all those users they lost.

delecti• 4 years ago

Also Allo and Buzz, plus chatting with other editors in Docs. SMS through Voice also integrated into Talk/Chat/Hangouts at various points.

If they had put an even remotely competent person (who cares about more than just getting promoted) in charge and they could have been a leading player the space by just keeping things clear enough to follow.

colechristensen2• 4 years ago

It is clearly the result of the internal structure of Google where no one in charge is seemingly that interested in producing cohesive products, there is apparently a kind of internal competitive economy which results in this and other nonsense.

IceWreck• 4 years ago

Youtube Chat and Google Maps chat too

aaronbrethorst• 4 years ago

I don't see how they will ever get anywhere if they are always starting over

I'm sure literally thousands of Google employees have gotten promoted on the strength of their work on building out yet another new chat platform. That's why they keep doing this; it has nothing to do with any sort of broad corporate strategy. It's individuals optimizing for their own success instead of for some vague notion of corporate success.

akkartik2• 4 years ago

That explanation helps but doesn't explain why new chat apps get greenlit more often than new local shopping sites, social networks or balloonshots.

gedy• 4 years ago

Yeah I'm just one person, but their confusing and chaotic approach to messaging apps and the Inbox vs GMail thing a few years ago were the two things what turned me from respecting Google and interested in their new apps into believing the don't have any idea or care what they are doing and better off not trying out or depending on their offerings.

(Thank goodness they haven't done same to maps and docs).

techdragon• 4 years ago

That’s a really good way to describe it. I no longer respect Google. Their core search engine is in decline, their cloud is innovative but useless and has the most confusing UI of the three major cloud vendors, they began weaponising open source as a recruitment pipeline, and they can deliver a product with any sort of expectation that it will last more than 12 months anymore…

I have lost respect for them. I have gone from an enthusiastic Search and chrome and gmail user… I got into the invite only beta in the first six months! … to basically only caring when Google do things that affect the non-stuff I actually care about.

jedberg2• 4 years ago

It's like they don't have any idea where they want to go and need to make a whole new service every time they have an idea, instead of just adding a feature to their existing service.

It happens because of their internal promotion culture. You get a promotion much faster if you make something new than if you improve something old.

ironmagma• 4 years ago

Don’t they have a rule that you can’t create something that competes with another Google product? How do any of these get created in the first place?

pkulak• 4 years ago

As a developer I’d much rather build something new than work on someone else’s code. There’s got to be much more than just a management problem here.

duxup• 4 years ago

are always starting over

I wouldn’t mind it if they kept features or something. Some coherent process, features, etc.

But it is a half baked deal every time with old / obvious features missing.

They operate like a mini no name start up and as far as I’m concerned I don’t think of it that way / if it has the name Google I expect some level of polish…maybe respect the users who get dragged from app to app…

noneeeed• 4 years ago

It's like what happened with Google Pay (I think it was that) where they rewrote it from scratch with fewer features, it was so bizarre.

refulgentis2• 4 years ago

HN tends to read deprecation notices (in this case, for a 17 year old frontend) and immediately bring up every marketing name for anything and everything involving text communication Google has ever made.

For the record:

- v1 - "Gchat" - simple chat added to Gmail

- v2 - "Google Talk" - 2005 - general chat service created out of "Gchat" enabling people to use it outside Gmail

- v3 - "Google Hangouts" - 2013 - integrate video chat from G+ into Talk

- v4 - "Google Meet/Chat" - 2017 - split Hangouts into video (Meet) and messaging (Chat)

mpol• 4 years ago

If it is all different frontends to the same backend, they very much failed at marketing. For an advertising company, creating this much chaos in their branding and communication is very confusing and somewhat laughable.

al_borland6• 4 years ago

No one should need to be a Google historian to know where to go to send a message.

pjerem2• 4 years ago

Marketing names are what the users use. Users don’t say « let’s get in touch via Google Chat Platform Protocol v4".

They use the marketing name without knowing what is behind. And to be fair, as of today, I’m not even sure non tech people even know how the current mainstream Google chat is named. The only time I used Google chat (maybe it was hangouts) was to reach my coworkers when slack was down.

kbelder• 4 years ago

What's Google Duo?

throwaway675309• 4 years ago

When are we going to get the google version of WOOF to unify all of these disparate services?

triggerman722• 4 years ago

Underrated post...assuming you mean wuphf lol

dehrmann• 4 years ago

They also acquihired Meebo.

torvald• 4 years ago

Don't forget a out Google Wave!

flowerbeater• 4 years ago

Or Google Buzz!

PontifexMinimus• 4 years ago

Was it Google Messages the one that came up as a pop-up in gmail and let you very easily do videoconferencing? I can't remember.

dom96• 4 years ago

How long before Google Chat is dead?

shagie• 4 years ago

There was a joke making its rounds back in May...

Overheard at Google IO: They’re making 6 new chat apps this year and decommissioning 7 of them.

lousken• 4 years ago

rip xmpp support?

leni536• 4 years ago

Wasn't xmpp support dropped years ago?

MattJ100• 4 years ago

They've gradually broken it over the years, but it still runs in some limited form. It's barely interoperable with modern XMPP, but occasionally I hear of people still using it.

mixedmath• 4 years ago

I guess. I've used the same xmpp integration for almost 15 years now. I remember thinking it was going to stop working at some point in the past, but it kept on chugging. I think maybe this time it will really die.

Too bad!

colechristensen2• 4 years ago

Which one was google talk?

lelandfe• 4 years ago

For the last 5 years? Just a service. Google shut down all first party apps starting in 2012 and wrapping in 2017.

Amusingly, they started sunsetting it to support the move to Google+ Hangouts. Not only does Google+ no longer exist, not only does Google+ Hangouts no longer exist, the progeny Google Hangouts is also dead.

leetrout• 4 years ago

The first one. XMPP that worked with programs like Trillian and Adium.

ballenf• 4 years ago

It even worked cross-platform with Messages (iMessages?) on Max OSX.

kgbcia• 4 years ago

Imagine if I did that to a production database. Instead of altering a table, just start over every schema change. Agile.

mupuff1234• 4 years ago

I mean, is anyone using it? Thought it was dead a long time ago.

ilrwbwrkhv• 4 years ago

Google honestly has the worst products of any large tech. Confusing and irritating. The only bright spark they had was the single search box on the homepage. And that was a stroke of luck. I am sure if they tried anything else, they would have messed it up.

pjerem2• 4 years ago

Right. But when it comes to confusing and irritating products, Microsoft is also very good.

MandieD• 4 years ago

No one can match Microsoft for terrible naming and mind-bogglingly bad name changes.

The epitome is the chat platform: starting out as the very generic Office Communications Server, then switching to the surprisingly clever Lync (short and unique, fantastically searchable), but then taking a turn for the literally blocked by corporate web proxies and unsearchable Skype for Business (the docs about switching to the new version were on hard-blocked skype.com), with confusing Skype for Business Online (same client, utterly different back end), and now to even less searchable Teams.

I guess having two of their foundational products be extremely common English utterances just set them up for this lack of reflection.

0des• 4 years ago

ribbon toolbar, clippy, the list goes on

petre5• 4 years ago

The annoying thing is that they put a search box on my phone's home screen, which I can't hide, even if I disable it.

meibo• 4 years ago

We migrated to Chat with our organization when they recommended it... It was rough for a while and it should've been in the oven for half a year longer, but now, it's an alright experience that ties in very well with the rest of workspace, especially considering that it's free of charge.

akmarinov• 4 years ago

It’s still pretty rough as far as features go.

You can’t automatically set a channel to be marked as read, for example.

dsr_• 4 years ago

It's beta!

"Google Chat is now available in early preview for personal Google Accounts on Android and desktop. When you turn on Google Chat in Gmail settings, you can test the experience and features. You may not be able to switch back to classic Hangouts in Gmail settings."

-- https://support.google.com/chat/answer/7653601

Only giant monopoly profits can sustain decades-long incompetency like Google's messaging systems.

losingom• 4 years ago

If nothing else, it's impressive that they've actually managed to migrate those Google Talk users over the years (myself included in that, albeit less than I used to). They probably did so extremely begrudgingly, but the path went something like:

Google Talk -> Hangouts -> Google Chat

People I added years ago are still reachable in Chat, which I guess is nice (in spite of everything else).

ehsankia• 4 years ago

Indeed, while not ideal, generally they've had a decent migration path. At least for the "message someone inside Gmail" usecase, as far as people are concern, for most people nothing has changed other than some slight UI. Outside of Gmail (especially on android) it is not as clean though.

ghaff6• 4 years ago

And Google Chat is pretty decent IMO if you're committed to Google Workspace. How you use it is probably a bit cultural. Where I work--or at least the teams I interact with--it seems to have developed into use Chat if you want a somewhat near-time response rather than email. At least the people I know rarely text these days and essentially never call on voice. Group chats vary by context.

garciasn• 4 years ago

The UX is absolutely horrendous. Don’t even get me started about the 4096 character limit or the fact that URLs in code blocks breaks the code block.

How about not being able to sort the user list by whatever order you want or folding groups? What about it creating “Spaces” for chats with more than one contact and forcing you to “leave” if you want to hide it to keep your list clean?

Maybe we should talk about how they recently started capturing, poorly, formatted text when you paste, forcing a paste with match style to strip it and no way to remove that default.

Maybe we should talk about the horrendous fact that it’s a web app.

Maybe we could add in there’s no user configuration ability at all.

Fuck Google Chat. It’s a horrendous piece of shit and it needs to die, not third party support.

m-p-3• 4 years ago

I'm still annoyed at how the "Markdown" syntax in Google Chat is not following the CommonMark specifications.

abirch4• 4 years ago

I love Google but at this point I always expect them to drop support for anything.

al_borland6• 4 years ago

What would it take for you to not love them anymore? They're like a friend who is always making plans, then bailing at the last minute.

ChrisArchitect3• 4 years ago

Hangouts worked excellently for so many years, even after most transitioned out of Talk (aka 3rd party clients) -- available in gmail, available on web, working app etc. Actually with Chat appearing on the scene the transition has been pretty seemless also, with Hangouts still working on web if you wanted it to, and interchangable with Chat versions.

utucuro• 4 years ago

Who says that they managed it? I went from Google Talk to Hangouts to no Google Services aside from Play store, kept only because of Android devices... Ideally I would not rely on any Google services, but it is not feasible for me...

tims33• 4 years ago

The problem with chat is that every big tech company is only interested in "winning" vs driving usage. Google would be better off fighting for open standards to improve their position in this market. Open standards in the 70s, 80s, and 90s did such great things for technology.

brian_cunnie2• 4 years ago

Good point! I think the EU is gonna force Apple to open up Messages, in which case Apple Messages will become the _de facto_ standard.

ghaff6• 4 years ago

I don't want iMessage to be a _de facto_ standard. I want my work stuff to be mostly on my work channels. Very little work stuff gets onto my cell phone number which includes iMessage.

usrn• 4 years ago

Hopefully they'll just force everyone to federate with XMPP again. That was pretty great and now we have OMEMO so it's even E2EE.

WheatM• 4 years ago

You're overstating the importance of Apple outside of the USA. No one I know uses Apple Messages.

Dma54rhs• 4 years ago

But not many people use iMessages in EU to begin with. Its more of an American thing because of history of texting and the iMessage color phenomenon.

scarface742• 4 years ago

Right, they may make Apple Messages interoperable with SMS…

Oh wait.

mistrial9• 4 years ago

aren't all the Big Tech companies you are thinking of, actually American Big Tech companies spreading out into other places? If I were not an American, I can definitely sympathize with the point of view that having American companies run vital communications for other populations.. is not OK. Open Standards are the concerted effort of thinking people to make something where the motivations can vary, but the tech is reliable. I think it is no accident that things like weather apps, chat, and trading photos have become ... not only that ..

mavhc• 4 years ago

In the 70s/80s/90s your software didn't change every day. Google started with xmpp with Talk, but it didn't evolve fast enough to add new features. In Talk days I had to dismiss notifications from every device, even though I'd read it on one. And file sharing, video calls, audio calls, group messages didn't work well.

The internet enabled software to update every day, that made standards way less relevant, sadly.

The HTML5 model of standards is probably best for the modern world

ChrisArchitect3• 4 years ago

yes, in theory XMPP should have won everything (with clients built on top) -- but there's this other thing of users being so dumb/wool over the eyes about new flashy apps and not understanding "texting" as SMS vs internet based messaging and international differences meant stupid closed things like WhatsApp took off and none are the wiser. Ridiculous to this day that WhatsApp conned so many people into thinking they were getting 'free texting' by basically making the accounts phone numbers, even tho there's no connection to cell networks/SMS. Arrgh. Not to mention a similar sort of confusion with iMessage. But its so hard to counter momentum and social circle movement with these things and ppl's willingness/unwillingness to jump apps or run ten messaging apps crazily.

cuteboy193• 4 years ago

Consumers don't care if the text goes through cell networks or the internet. They don't even care if the message appears in WhatsApp or their messages app. All they care about is sending a message or an image to a phone number and they want the cheapest and fastest way to do that. So they aren't as stupid as they appear

MomoXenosaga3• 4 years ago

Pretty sure I have never payed WhatsApp a single cent in the last 10 years so I don't see how I've been conned.

Hell how to get WhatsApp profitable seems to befuddle Facebook.

XorNot• 4 years ago

XMPP wasn't a great protocol for mobile.

The dependence on supporting extensions to get features like push messaging from servers to work efficiently was a problem.

tootie• 4 years ago

It's unbelievable how frothy the chat market is when there hasn't been a substantive innovation since the 80s.

tyingq• 4 years ago

I can't remember if this means my Polycom Google Voice ATA stops working or not. There was at least one third party Google Voice thing that needed Google Talk to work.

sayrer• 4 years ago

So weird, because they actually had the best one for some time. The Windows Google Talk client was amazing.

throwaway14356• 4 years ago

everything about it was great except the google part. That part makes it unusable.

whatsapp is a bit of a turd but i don't expect it to get janked half way the conversation.

oivey• 4 years ago

A normal company would have had basically one product all these years and not renamed it just due to internal engineering efforts.

I also imagine chat apps are great for promotion driven development. Not that hard to make from scratch relative to something like search or maps. I’m surprised Gmail isn’t constantly cannibalized, although still it has been a small amount. Some execs must be protecting dilution of that important brand.

esrauch• 4 years ago

They did do Inbox which tried to cannabalize Gmail but it ended with it merging some features back in to Gmail instead.

ldjkfkdsjnv• 4 years ago

I really miss inbox

8ytecoder• 4 years ago

They did shut it down before it took off though. And made a half hearted attempt to merge the features.

throwaway293032• 4 years ago

  A normal company would have had (...)

Alphabet (or Google) is not a normal company. According to Alphabet's[0] website:

  As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” As part of that, we also said that you could expect us to make “smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses.” From the start, we’ve always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have.

[0] - https://abc.xyz

Lammy• 4 years ago

Alphabet couldn't be a more appropriate name for such an "abnormal" company https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...

sergiotapia• 4 years ago

Talk, chat, meet, hangouts, duo?

Are these the same - what will gsuite users use wtf

BonoboIO3• 4 years ago

At this time it is a running gag that Google creates a messenger every one or two years.

They have so much leverage with google accounts, gmail and android … pushing a WhatsApp / Telegram clone that works would take over the world.

But they achieved to even cripple Google Meets, a product that works. Unbelievable.

newsclues• 4 years ago

Failing to avoid antitrust issues if they succeed and become the dominant hub for online?

rwalle• 4 years ago

I don't think anyone antitrust is relevant at all in this discussion. Nobody would think that Google Talk/Chat/Whatever is remotely close to being scrutinized by government agencies.

BonoboIO3• 4 years ago

They „sponsor“ with x00 millions to exist. A competitor is great, because it avoids antitrusts like Microsoft had with IE.

raverbashing• 4 years ago

pushing a WhatsApp / Telegram clone that works would take over the world.

True. It is frankly amazing how Google can't compete in that area

They lack the vision. They lack the top-down mandate. They lack the will to centralize and push the effort.

(see how most projects were experiments/things that "stuck"). I think one of the few times where Google successfully managed a global project to completion was Android? (and yet it was acquired)

hypothesis• 4 years ago

Current wisdom is that company exists to make money and everything is optimized for that. What if workers are fully onboard and working hard for next promotion? For products that are not money making machines like the ad biz, let them wither and start a new every couple years?

steve_adams_86• 4 years ago

Is the problem perhaps that a standalone product like WhatsApp or Telegram offers some degree of privacy?

I'm not sure if Google Talk/Hangouts/whatever ever offered privacy, I know Telegram's privacy model has flaws, and I'm not clear on WhatsApp's quality of security. At any rate, I do know people expect both WhatsApp and Telegram to be relatively private, which likely counts for something. On the other hand, I find people assume Google products are by default not private.

I'm not sure how decision making occurs, but I have a hard time envisioning a GoogleGram application getting adopted easily because it would be perceived as a commercial effort in an otherwise less commercial/more private space.

I could be totally wrong here, and I'm mostly curious what others think.

BonoboIO3• 4 years ago

Google Hangouts … I even forgot that that existed.

I think most consumers use the product the works for them and is free. Privacy is an aspect, but most, not all, people don’t care that much.

A working product beats a half working product that preserves privacy. If it works and preserves privacy … u have a winner.

oarabbus_• 4 years ago

Except WhatsApp has already taken over the world.

There seems to be this perception that Google can defeat any competitor if they chose to, and that benefit of the doubt is never given to the competition. They can't, and fail almost every time time. Android is one exception (though Apple remains the more impressive company than Google, as far as 10Ks are concerned), and GCP is certainly successful despite having the Bronze medal in the cloud space, but it reeks of a "Lebron James could be the best boxer in the world or best NFL QB if he just trained for 3 months" kind of vibe.

UweSchmidt• 4 years ago

Most comments are critical about Google's way of doing things, but maybe this is a good moment for an eulogy. Is anyone using Google Talk right now or has good things to say about it? Was it a place where you happened to have meaningful conversation? (Not me, but sometimes I'm nostalgic about internet places that came and went...)

civilized• 4 years ago

It would be great just to get an explanation of how people were even using it. Most users were kicked off Google Talk around 2013. Apparently third party apps were somehow allowed to continue using it.

encryptluks22• 4 years ago

They weren't kicked off. It was just known to people that only used the web app as Hangouts.

Macha4• 4 years ago

It was fine. I talked to some people in there, I plugged it into Pidgin as I did those days, it was nice that I could talk to other people using my own domain and later moved to other providers without contacts noticing.

Because it was open I could use a generic interface to it, which was good for me as it let me shove it into the same app as MSN, YIM and AIM, but not so good for Google as it didn't make it particularly sticky, which I gather is why they shelved it for hangouts (though they did leave it's undead corpse shamble on)

eternityforest2• 4 years ago

I just ignore any news relating to google communication services. Other than gmail, I just expect it to vanish in 18 months or less.

move-on-by• 4 years ago

Google Inbox was amazing. I was a huge Gmail fan, I had all sorts of automatic rules, and labels, etc- then I tried Inbox. All of a sudden Gmail became an unmanageable mess compared to the simplicity of Inbox. But of course, Google killed inbox. It was the exact thing I needed to get out of Google. I use my own domain email now and have switched between a couple different providers. Of course I still have my Gmail email- but it just forwards to my main email now. Other then for work, I’ve fully de-googled my personal usage of Google. All thanks to them showing me the glory of Inbox and then killing it. Thanks Google!

eternityforest2• 4 years ago

Never heard of Inbox till now, but it looks like it was pretty cool.

I wonder if you could make a clone of it that used normal gmail(Or whatever other provider, if you degoogled) as a backend?

remflight• 4 years ago

I have successfully migrated almost all my contacts off Google Chat to either Whatsapp or Signal. The only holdout is my wife. Everyone else agreed that Google Chat is the worst of the bunch and their product hasn’t changed or improved in years.

I would love an explanation as to why this persists. Google has now become the place where products go to die and no one at Google seems to care. Nest is another company that hasn’t innovated or added significant new features in years. Same goes with Waze. Apple Maps is now the best navigation app because they have invested in innovation and for some reason Google won’t.

dasz• 4 years ago

So, talk is now done. Great. What's next?

Let's see: Google speak. Google yak. Google chatter. Google gossip. Google watercooler. Google friends. Google chums. Google getogether.

I'm sure I missed one.

krolden• 4 years ago

Phoneblocks

Markoff• 4 years ago

Just ignore any communication app coming from Google, it will be sooner or later killed.

gaws• 4 years ago

Let's see: Google speak. Google yak. Google chatter. Google gossip. Google watercooler. Google friends. Google chums. Google getogether.

You will use each one of them, and you will like it.

WesolyKubeczek• 4 years ago

I really had a Mandela effect here: I thought Google Talk had died a long, long time ago, having been replaced with Hangouts.

trashface• 4 years ago

I had the exact same response. Its hard to keep track of which chat apps google has killed and which are still alive.

encryptluks22• 4 years ago

Yes and no.. Google Talk is the same as Hangouts, but the name of their XMPP service that connected to Hangouts.

brightball• 4 years ago

Fwiw, Google Chat and Spaces, while not on the same level as Slack are definitely filling the “good enough to stick with” niche at a small company I’m helping now.

If they actually commit to improving it, there’s real potential there.

zmmmmm• 4 years ago

I kept using Hangouts for so long because of one thing only: XMPP support. Even without federation it put Hangouts into a different tier of service.

Now I guess there is not a single mainstream service that supports any interoperable standard protoocol. What a sad state of affairs to be in 25 years after we had dozens of interoperable clients / protocols in routine use.

stonecharioteer• 4 years ago

I used Miranda IM to chat with people on yim, msnm and gtalk all the time. It was amazing. Pidgin was good too. I miss that. I wish Facebook/Instagram chat, whatsapp and iMessage all supported XMPP.

justshowpost• 4 years ago

Now I guess there is not a single mainstream service that supports any interoperable standard protoocol.

Matrix

bradgessler• 4 years ago

Google has had so many variants of this that I don’t even know what they’re shutting down by just reading the headline.

agilob• 4 years ago

Let me help you, if you type `/hangout` command in Slack, it opens google meet...

rrix2• 4 years ago

And if you just type / and find that option in the list it's listed as a "Google+ Hangout"!

bborud• 4 years ago

If Google hadn’t been so obsessed with making messaging special (one way or another) they might have managed to make it good.

andrepd• 4 years ago

GChat, Talk, Duo, Meet, Hangouts... what did I miss?

lotsofpulp3• 4 years ago

Allo

morepork2• 4 years ago

Messages, Voice, Allo (rip)

even Google docs: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/hotte...

tech234a• 4 years ago

Also YouTube messaging

lmkg• 4 years ago

Fun reading: An exhaustive(?) history of Google's communication tools. There are like five different products with "Hangout" branding.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...

beachy• 4 years ago

I feel like my brain is now trained to skip over any Google chat-oriented product names or any information whatsoever about them simply because of the continuous churn.

Instead I'm trained to just look for something that looks like a chat window and use that. I literally have no idea which one I actually use, nor whether this announcement affects me.

I would love to know if inside Google there is any long term analysis of this. Is it just a series of teams getting accolades each year/quarter for Yet Another Chat Service? Or is someone taking the long view and evlauating just how much market confusion Google have spawned with this ridiculous never-ending saga?

bogota• 4 years ago

You are not alone in feeling this way. Hangouts was awesome and for a while my friend group tried to keep up with whatever googles newly pitched chat app was. We all just use WhatsApp now.

amachefe• 4 years ago

Loved Google Talk. Lightweight simple and does the job very well. Havent trusted Google after the moved off it.

miked85• 4 years ago

I didn't realize Google Talk existed anymore. Google has gone through at last a half dozen iterations of chat applications. I don't even know what the latest one is.

We’re winding down Google Talk

Related Stories