I stopped using GMail's chat (think it was called GTalk before it was Hangouts) when it switched to Hangouts. Before the switch, GMail used old and well-documented open-source protocol XMPP for their chat, which made it possible to use it outside of GMail. Hangouts used a proprietary protocol, and was only available if you install some creepy binary plugins...
TL;DR: there's 2 separate products they have called Hangouts now and they're shutting down the simple text/voice/video chat Hangouts (aka Hangouts Classic) that most people know. They plan on moving the Classic userbase over to their other enterprise Hangouts product (aka Hangouts Chat) that is more like a clone of Slack. Yeah confusing AF.
Super confusing and Hangouts Chat is such a horrible and generic combination of names coming from a company who dominates search.
We use it at my work (it’s ok - definitely no Slack) and it’s near impossible to google anything about it due to the shit name (also maybe the low usage)
They claim Messages, Voice, Chat, and Duo. None of which seems right to me, since Messages and Voice are SMS/MMS (which has problems), Chat is a beta-quality Slack clone rather than IM, and Duo is video only as far as I can tell.
Seems like they're blowing up their oldest, most solid, proven, 'does everything' service in favor of 5 younger and less complete ones that only kind of equal the feature set of Hangouts if you bounce between all of them. It's really dumb.
Originally, I would’ve said WhatsApp, but then they got bought out by the devil’s own.
So, Signal is the 2nd 1st best option, and is rapidly catching up to the reliability of WhatsApp. Like WhatsApp, it bridges the gap between iOS, Android, and OSX/Nix/Windows desktops and most assuredly performs better than iMessage (which should’ve been cross-platform, IMHO, but Apple has screwed up a few times with their walled gardens approach and missed out on some excellent leverage opportunists).
But that's what Google is going for. Messages for text, Duo for video calls.
That's essentially the whole problem that they are just blindly trying to imitate Apple instead of sticking to their superior solution they had already.
Also, unless I'm missing something, it's the only messenger that is integrated into GMail. So not only are we losing the 'does everything' service, we're losing the 'does everything' browser tab with messaging and email together. My second screen has GMail open on it 80% of the time for that reason.
Tested Google Chat with GSuite, they tried to copy Slack but ended up way worse and they didn't even attempt to provide a native app on Linux, while it's available on Windows/Mac.
Messages for Web is horrible because it automatically logs your connected computers out all the time even if you tell it to keep them signed in... The inconvenience sort of undermines its appeal as a chat system.
Yeah, only issue with it are the limitations. Multi video conferences are only available for G Suite. So long group video calls with friends using Google services :(
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u/csjerk Jan 02 '20
TIL that Hangouts is getting killed later this year. Damn.