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Communications IT Technology

Google Replaces Gchat With Hangouts Today (axios.com) 178

Posted by msmash from the day-has-come dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The day dreaded by stubborn office workers around the country has finally arrived. At some point today, Google will replace its Google Talk feature in Gmail -- known colloquially to most of the world as Gchat -- with Google Hangouts. The reasoning: Google's announcement of the switch back in March touts Hangouts' better features and integration with other Google products over the barebones Gchat, which launched way back in 2005.
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Google Replaces Gchat With Hangouts Today More

Google Replaces Gchat With Hangouts Today

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  • Hangouts doesn't have specific contacts (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Too bad it contains a bunch of people I don't want to talk to over chat.
    GTalk contained a specific list of contacts I cared to talk to over chat (like AIM/MSN before it).
    I don't use hangouts, I don't like hangouts.

  • Just give me back GoogleTalk (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26, 2017 @01:11PM (#54693005)

    Everything since GTalk has been garbage.

    What's the problem with wanting a low-RAM-footprint, standalone chat program, that I don't have to open up aRAM-guzzling web browser to access?

    Big surprise, Google, not everybody spends every waking moment with your browser open (mostly because it's a RAM-guzzling, forced advertising dystopia.).

    Seriously, the closest they have to a standalone application for hangouts is a plug-in for Chrome. Fuck Chrome. Why would I just use a browse whose entire purpose is to advertise to me and gather as much information about me as possible.

    Firefox + Pidgin is where I'm at right now, but I'm still fuckered into using Hangouts through it because there isn't a good, truly cross-platform (I mean Windows/Linux/Mac/iOS/Android, all of them. Everything is either iOS/Android only or Windows/Mac/Linux only. WTF?) messenger that is worth a damn that I can get people to switch to.

    • it's not like google would have a vested interest in you keeping your (their) browser open 24/7. They definitely wouldn't pull bullshit like this in order to nudge you in that direction. A company who's motto was 'do no evil' would never, ever employ such underhanded tactics..

      • The problem is, google is the last instant messenger to go full evil. Everybody else that anybody uses already has, so there's nowhere left to talk to people.

        Who's at fault? Probably the common user, who demands evil. They actually want to chat through today's trendy weird proprietary phone app, not open protocols.

        • Pidgin is not available for Android. Don't know if for iPhone, don't care. I am rather annoyed with this, since most of the choices for accessing open chat protocols on Android look...iffy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The browser is Google's primary OS. Most of their apps run on it, and it runs almost everywhere. You can hardly blame them for making it their platform of choice for desktop.

    • Telegram is cross platform, but has no voice or video calling (at the moment). https://telegram.org/ [telegram.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        Telegram has a shitty desktop client to boot with a horrible user list.

        • I use it on a Mac.
          It looks quite fine, no real "difference" to other chat applications.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Khyber ( 864651 )

            https://screenshots.en.sftcdn.... [sftcdn.net]

            If you call that usable/looks fine you must have the IQ of a special needs student.

            Camfrog's user interface for the Desktop is 1,000x better.

            And doesn't require my fucking phone number.

            • It does not look like this on my Mac.

              Never heard about Camfrog, another chat client?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Khyber ( 864651 )

                Camfrog is a killer chat client focused on multi-video realtime chat. Try HUNDREDS of cameras at once.

            • Telegram does not really require your phone number, it only needs one to verify your account.
              What is wrong with that?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Khyber ( 864651 )

                Broken phone? Changed phone number? Only have a land line? They store that phone number for future verification purposes (say if you install on a new machine and log into that account,) and if they get breached that's a ripe database for abuse? Should I keep going?

                • Yes continue please,
                  as those scenarios rarely happen in real life.
                  I use not even my own phone number to verify for a new device ... and you can change the phone number on the registration web site anyway.

                  There needs to be a way to quickly verify/add new devices and phone number with SMS is the most easiest way to do that.

                  If you don't like that, up to you. But cursing and swearing about it is rather stupid.

              • Telegram does not really require your phone number, it only needs one to verify your account.
                What is wrong with that?

                I don't know anything about Telegram specifically, but unless it's actually using the phone number for some feature (exchanging SMS, maybe?), then everything is wrong with that.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Stop lying.
          Are you an idiot or what?

          If I don't know something you know, it is not a ly, fucking moron.

          My Telegram app on my iPad has no voice calls. Idiot!

          I can press a button to record my voice and then send to my chat partner.

          Get a damn clue what a "lie" is, asshole.

    • Firefox + Pidgin is where I'm at right now, but I'm still fuckered into using Hangouts through it because there isn't a good, truly cross-platform (I mean Windows/Linux/Mac/iOS/Android, all of them. Everything is either iOS/Android only or Windows/Mac/Linux only. WTF?) messenger that is worth a damn that I can get people to switch to.

      You know why there isn't a free alternative? You might want to sit down for this .... stuff like this costs money.

      Why would I just use a browse whose entire purpose is to advertise to me and gather as much information about me as possible.

      Because you are not willing to pay for such a service, and as a reasonably rational human you understand that if someone is offering a good, x-platform chat service, they has to be some sort or motivation for them to build, maintain, and support said service.

      • You know why there isn't a free alternative? You might want to sit down for this .... stuff like this costs money.

        There are tons of free alternatives. The problem is an IM client that your friends aren't on is worthless, and advertising costs a lot of money.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Someone should build a distributed chat system that removes the need for central coordinating servers and as an added bonus provides TOR-like privacy using onion routing.

        Clients would keep lists of other clients and share them on request. Some mechanism would be needed to ensure that clients can find each other, which is probably the most challenging part. Maybe support for ad-hock servers could be added, so people could contribute to the network if they wanted to and speed up locating clients, but in a way

        • You mean WASTE [sourceforge.net], which got semi-forked over to here [sourceforge.net]. Pass around the news, it could definitely use being revived but I've no idea how to do it aside from let people know it exists.

          Interesting note: Its initial release in 2003 got reported here.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ogdenk ( 712300 )

        That IRC and various other IM clients used to run on machines with 16MB of total RAM or less, some supporting multiple interactive users. If your just throwing text w/ hyperlinks and images around, why would you think 38MB of RAM is reasonable? Hell, I used to engage in multiparty online chats with machines with 64K of RAM.

        What's wrong with wanting software that does one thing and does it well? Web browsers are for viewing hypertext documents with images. Web browsers were never meant to be the catch-a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          why would you think 38MB of RAM is reasonable

          It's probably not 38MB of actual RAM, most of it is probably shared memory, mapped files that are only loaded on demand and the like. But okay, let's say 38MB for the sake of argument.

          The reason we have so many apps now, available at the low price of free, and with fairly advanced features yet still reasonably secure and stable is that we moved away from trying to save every byte and instead concentrated on making better apps.

          I used to run those old IRC clients that only took a few dozen kilobytes of RAM. I

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • 40megs for a chat program is a long, long way from being "low memory usage".

    • May I suggest Facebook Messenger? /duck

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nasch ( 598556 )

      Slack? That has Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, and web clients. And it's very nice, and has a free tier. The main thing the free tier doesn't include (from my perspective anyway) is group audio and video calls - two party only.

  • So What. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mfh ( 56 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @01:12PM (#54693007) Homepage Journal

    I'm unimpressed to be quite honest. If an app is any good, a user will use it until something better comes along. Google can't understand that and they force users into their versions of whatever popular app exists. Google+ was an example of this kind of shakedown. It's terrible. Facebook is no better but Google+ was simply awful.

    If something is good people will use it. Youtube is good so people use it all the time... but Youtube administrative causes a lot of users big trouble. Look at people who lose their revenue because some professional squatting company comes along and files bogus DCMAs against legitimate Youtube users who were merely applying the fair-use rules appropriately in the first place.

    Google doesn't really care about you. They don't care about your audience or your beliefs or values. They just want to force their own profit margins and grow their garden of trust until the next big harvest.

    • youtube users who were merely applying the fair-use rules appropriately in the first place.
      I would say it is pretty difficult to use youtube in a "fair-use sense".

      and files bogus DCMAs against legitimate Youtube
      Filing bogus DCMAs is obviously super easy.

  • and still no way to search through Hangouts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by urbster1 ( 871298 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @01:12PM (#54693009)
    other than in Gmail on a desktop PC browser. why no search feature in the Hangouts app, Google? for some reason I thought you were supposed to be good at searching

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Alumoi ( 1321661 )

      Google good at searching? Maybe through your e-mails and any personal data they can get their hands on. Otherwise Ducky FTW!

  • XMPP service (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @01:16PM (#54693035) Homepage

    Currently the XMPP server is still available (and can chat to Google Hangout users)
    For now.
    Let's hope that Google will at least maintain this access.

    • I have about 80 contacts on Skype.
      90% of my phones address book is either on
      - Viber
      - Telegram
      - or on WhatsApp (which I no longer use as it refuses to upgrade/install on my old iOS version)

      A good deal is on iMessenger (but we don't use it, it is to buggy)

      I had about 10 contacts on GTalk.
      I have 2 on Hangout (both on GTalk, too).

      I even have one KiK contact ... don't remember how that happened.

      The chance that any of my contacts migrate to Hangout is basically ZERO.
      On my Desktop I don't use it, unless one of my

  • While I am not entirely happy with this move, my sincere hope is that Google will improve its YouTube app, both on desktop/Chrome and Android with addition of a feature that lets the video remain visible as I browse comments.

    This isn't so hard.

    I have submitted many requests for this but they just seem not to listen, sadly.

    • You actually read YouTube comments? Personally, I'm not quite that masochistic.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        Repair videos.

        I kind of hate them, but occasionally they are useful and I often find links or other valuable info about the repair in the comments.

        A lot of the time they are low view videos, so there's not 8 billion shitposts to filter through, either. The latest game of thrones preview or some other popular content? Forget it. It's like someone gave accounts to the lowest IQ creature that can type.

  • It's Google -- they'll change it again in a couple years.

  • Trust me here, now. (Score:3)

    by thegreatbob ( 693104 ) on Monday June 26, 2017 @01:57PM (#54693341) Journal
    You want this. Why? Because Google wants you to want it. /logic
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Hm ...
      I have a brand new Android device, well 6 weeks old. A Lenovo Yoga Book.

      their recommended apps for IM (Allo) or video chat (Duo.)

      Those apps are not on it. Hangout is, but I don't remember if I installed it (I think I did).

  • Hangouts was tolerable until they nuked Effects. The sad trombone was the unofficial meeting sound...

  • Hangout is one of the most ugly programs I have ever used. (yes I use the App on Android, and used to use it on iPad until it got discontinued (( for my iOS version? )) ...)
    No idea what UI designers think, probably there was none ...

    Why one is replacing a Jabber based communication system with a Hangout bullshit is beyond me.

    • Hangout is one of the most ugly programs I have ever used

      What's ugly about it? Don't like green?

      • The fact that you don't see the edges of "controls" ??

        • Hmm. I'm not sure what you mean. Looks like any other Material Design app to me. Perhaps I'm just used to MD, but it all seems very straightforward to me.

          I'm looking at the app and I don't see anything that needs edges but doesn't have them. In the list of conversation threads there are no lines between conversations but each is represented as a horizontal section with photo of the person, name and last message and time. I can tap anywhere on these conversation "bars" to open the conversation.

          In the con

          • Well, the name "Material Design" is completely misleading.
            It could be called "boring computer interface" there is nothing "material" in it.
            E.g. look at the original iOS iBooks App or Calendar App.

            The book app looked like a real book, not like a floating screen of text. The main reason why I'm on iOS 7 on my iPad and don't upgrade.

            Yeah, the UI of Hangout "works" ... but I hate it anyway :D Can not use it right now, as I would need to log of with my "youtube account" and log on with my "gmail/hangouts account

            • Yeah, the UI of Hangout "works" ... but I hate it anyway :D Can not use it right now, as I would need to log of with my "youtube account" and log on with my "gmail/hangouts account" to find some specifics.

              Oh, I thought we were talking about the mobile apps.

              • Well, google in its wisdom decided that from one day to the other the iPad version stopped working.

                And there is no upgrade for my OS available.

  • Out of the many chatting/messaging/video config things I have tried, by far I hated hangouts the worst. It always seemed to have problems, the UI I remember being really poor, and it just was not as effective as other things for team communication...

    I can only imagine how many groups will be driven into the willing arms of Slack because of this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khyber ( 864651 )

      Slack doesn't have useful video or voice chat so those who need it won't be moving to Crack or Shitcord any time soon.

  • ... heard of it.

    I have more Gmail accounts than Carter has little liver pills.

  • Before they ditch hangouts for Duo, Allo, or what they just had in mind this week.

  • Given Google's history:

    better features

    So useless features, or awesome features that they'll remove next year.

    integration with other Google products

    That you can't avoid, even if you don't want integration (and god forbid you have say, two Google accounts -- its a giant crapshoot which one will be "active" at any particular time. Not that Google is the only company that doesn't believe you may want to do something like have separate work and personal accounts. Skype anyone?)

    And I'm sure Hangouts won't be happy to accept the fact that I'd hidden chat a long ti

  • Hi! Chat is a large enough space with a diverse enough set of requirements that one size does not fit all.

    Discord works great for games.

    Zoom focuses on business conferences.

    Skype has cheap long distant rates for internet to non-Internet phones.

    WhatApp is great for international users.

    There is another international chat app I used which had great call back, call forwarding, and automatic response features because of being in different time zones.

    People who live on Facebook use that chat.

    I use Google hangouts

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