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Google

The Gmail App Takes Calls Now, Too, Because Google Wants It To Do Everything (theverge.com) 63

Posted by msmash from the hello? dept.
Google is announcing even more Workspace features today, part of an increased cadence of changes to the company's office and communications software suite over the past year or so. From a report: Today's announcement is a bit of a milestone, however. Although there is still the smattering of small and coming-soon updates, the bigger change is that Gmail is getting a redesign that reveals its true nature in Google's eyes: the central hub for every Google communication app. To begin, Google is adding the ability to "ring" another Google user with Google Meet -- but inside the Gmail mobile app, not inside the Meet app. When the feature rolls out and turns on, your Gmail app will be able to be called just like any other VOIP app (in addition to being able to join Google Meet meetings). Google says the standalone Meet app will get the same ability to place calls, not just create group meetings, at some point in the future. That Gmail was the first place Google thought to put its calling feature reveals how important Gmail has become to the larger changes happening within Google Workspace.
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The Gmail App Takes Calls Now, Too, Because Google Wants It To Do Everything More

The Gmail App Takes Calls Now, Too, Because Google Wants It To Do Everything

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  • Everything? (Score:3)

    by haraldm ( 643017 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @09:45AM (#61775397)
    Can it also make coffee?

  • A constantly moving target (Score:5, Informative)

    by gregarican ( 694358 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @09:50AM (#61775411) Homepage

    It's one thing to offer an evolving service suite, but the constant rate of change and difficulty keeping up with Google is maddening. From both a support and third party dev point of view.

    I think back to how I had developed a project that integrated with Google Voice. Was slick, of course until Google changed its authentication mechanism and ultimately migrated things away. Then I think of when Google acquired Postini years ago. The old Postini spam filtering engine was epic and was one of the more effective solutions back in the day. I used that as a front-end for inbound mail before forwarding it to our Exchange Server. It beat the hell out of Microsoft's ineffective spam filtering. Of course Google migrated Postini into their Google Apps for Business, which then begat Google G Suite, which then begat Google Workspace. And somewhere along the way totally retired their Postini module.

    I could go on and on. Bottom line is putting your eggs all in the Google basket requires countless maintenance and migration if you develop against their platforms. And for business support you better read up on the daily...

    • I couldn't agree more. I used Hangouts for many legacy conversations. Moved into the email app is the weirdest thing ever. I know that I can get the Chat app, but still, all of my less tech-savvy friends are confused as heck.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      Change is hard, boomer.

      • I was going to end my mini-rant with "get off my lawn" so I hear ya. But not just talking about change. Talking about abandon ship. So yeah, change as in "scrap your entire project and target it for another platform/solution."

      • Re:A constantly moving target (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @10:10AM (#61775511)

        Not hard. Expensive.

        Google don't get it. Google could have blown amazon and microsoft out the water a long time ago, they've had some damn good services. But nobody will authorize moving services onto Googles platform because they fail at the first hurdle of business continuity. Google are constantly shutting down and starting up things. And rarely with enough warning for a comforable migration. We just can't AFFORD to trust them. And every IT department I've dealt wih feels the same way, prefering to even use smaller companies like Digital Ocean or even Hetzner over Google simply because theres a good chance that VM or Kubenetes cluster will still be supported 10 years from now. And Azure and AWS have spent an awful lot of effort into making sure existing customers don't get reamed when they make changes, so as the big fish in the pond, they'll probably get top billing when evaluating cloud offerings.

        And thats a shame. The google app engne, and their kubernetes hosting are world class, and their ML stuff is phenomenal. But I just can't trust google. Not after all they've done

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        I could either spend my time rewriting a previously working function to fit the marketing whim of Google today, or I could spend that same time developing new functionality to make my users have a better user experience.

        It would be one thing if the design of the previous technology proceeded functional improvements and they had to make the tough call to require a transition to get to better things. Or if they had security design flaws that simply demanded rework on the client. However, it's pretty much all

    • Re:A constantly moving target (Score:5, Informative)

      by xwin ( 848234 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @10:30AM (#61775563)
      The company I work for uses Google suit for email and the rest of it. Initially I used google sites and hangouts and whatever else they offered. But over just a few years, old sites was obsolete and new sites was the thing. Hangouts was replaced by meet and all old applications were rendered incompatible. The things just keep moving around for no reason. People complain that Microsoft changes UI from time to time. Microsoft has nothing on Google, which obsoletes products faster than you can learn them.
      I am not using any new Google products. The management only sees the immediate price of the service, they do not see countless hours spent by the people migrating to the new incarnation of the product and wasting countless hours looking for a replacement. Corporations should avoid Google products like a plague if they want productivity and cost savings.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Hangouts was great, but Google failed to really promote it. Google is apparently quite bad at promoting products.

      So instead of fixing their marketing department, they decide to just ram everything inside one of the few popular apps they have. People weren't using it because they didn't know about it, so put it in Mail where they will get pissed off by it. Because pissing off users is a great way to make them aware of your product and want to use it.

      • It is really weird when you think about. Google does not advertise, almost never. Pixel phone is the only ad I've ever seen I think. And yet, they derive almost all of their revenue from other people's marketing dept's buying ads. So you'd think that google would think advertising is a good idea.

  • They need to announce the feature that makes Sheets (Shits?) compatible with Excel documents.

  • Will anyone care? (Score:3)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @10:06AM (#61775489)
    I can understand why they want to go this route - GMail is pretty much ubiquitous so they hope to get into the VOIP game through the backdoor. They also know that people would be very pissed if Google starts pushing new apps onto their device without asking even though they kind of are by bloating GMail with voice functionality. And if someone uses VOIP then they're probably already using Whatsapp (or Signal, Telegram etc.) and if they don't, then what is this going to do?

    Let's also not forget that Google has a history strewn with the bodies of dead apps [killedbygoogle.com] for VOIP, instant messaging, collab etc. I easily see this push to make GMail a kitchen sink of functionality will die on its ass too.

    • Maybe the ultimate goal is to toss so much garbage into GMail that it becomes nearly non-functional for the average user? I mean, how else are they gonna justify killing it for some new "streamlined" mail app?

    • Everyone is making good points about Google, but Google Meet does need this feature to "ring" a person. I like Meet and use it regularly. But not everyone monitors their email closely to see a Meet notification soon after it is sent. There is no convenient way to quickly get a persons attention. It kind of defeats the purpose if I need to phone a colleague to tell them to check their email for the link and join me in a Meet call.

      • Hangouts had it and was doing just fine. Voice or video calls.

        • Hangouts had it and was doing just fine.

          Which goes to show that Google is bad at marketing their products and tends to discontinue them rather than fix and improve them. It does not build consumer confidence.
          Although there were warnings earlier in the year, in July Google informed customers "Hangouts is going away soon, so switch to Google Chat now."
          How many Google messaging apps have been built and shut down now? ARS did a good article on this "A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps". https://arstechnica.com/ [arstechnica.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        That's why they're sneaking the functionality in through the backdoor. GMail is probably a facade and there is Google services that Meet & GMail both use. If they blatantly shoved Meet on users it would make people unhappy even though they're probably slipping 75% of the code it uses onto devices anyway.

  • News from 2023: Google drops Gmail Calls feature (Score:4, Informative)

    by bettersheep ( 6768408 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @10:08AM (#61775495)

    No-one should rely on Google providing any service but search. Google want fast bucks, and if a service doesn't get them fast bucks, they drop it, with no regard to its user base.

  • PHB Logic: "Let's jam everything into our most (only?) successful app, then everything is successful!"

  • So.... Will I somehow be able to add an appearance on my VOIP desk phone into a google account? I neither have nor want any gadget with "smart" in the name (because they aren't.)

    • No, but before they cancelled most of their VOIP offerings, this already worked in the gmail web client.

      I remember using it in 2006.

  • Software mirrors the organization that made it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by snowshovelboy ( 242280 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @10:31AM (#61775571)

    Look at it from the perspective of the implementer. The only way to keep your work from ending up in the google graveyard is to make it a part of one of the flagship services. I'm not so sure Google deliberately wants everything to be in Gmail, but savvy google engineers know their work has a better chance to meaningfully persist is if they cram it in there, instead of making it a standalone product.

  • Gmail VOIP (Score:5, Informative)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @10:31AM (#61775573) Homepage

    Gmail supported VOIP several years ago if you had a Google Voice account, but it magically disappeared. This isn't "new" in the least, just a reintroduction of an existing, killed, risen from the dead feature.

    • There already is a standard. [webrtc.org] No need to reinvent the wheel.

    • They really want you to use Meet.

      They refuse enhance the open standard like VOIP and standard SMS, which is what Google Voice was. They are going all in on the closed ecosystem.

      I get it, this is for their employees. Googlers first. They live in their email for their work.

      But for the rest of us, I never touch Google Meet.

  • Gmail has the worst UI imaginable. Other google communications apps. such as voice, phone, and messages are more reasonable. That's probably because the development was under the control of engineers, not suits or artists.

  • I mean fundamentally it can't figure out how it wants communication to work. Do you use dedicated calling apps, email, instant messaging, social media, social media also with instant messaging and calling, calling with instant messaging but no social media, or scrap that lets create a new instant messaging app which does everything, and while we're at it we should be able to make calls from the email client.

    Was that a word salad above? Yes, but that is also reflective of Google's strategy for communication

  • uh huh (Score:3)

    by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @10:51AM (#61775653)

    The Gmail App Takes Calls Now, Too, Because Google Wants It To Do Everything

    Now I have an overloaded mobile-app that requires a shit-ton of time-wasting context-switching, features I don't want, and a desktop chat app that is lagged and slow in a way ICQ on my Windows 98 machine in 1999 wasn't.

    TLDR: The latest round of Google products cause me to wait and wait and wait and wait....

    • requires a shit-ton of time-wasting context-switching, features I don't want

      Actually, the way android is designed if they know how the API works (they should, but it's not guaranteed) none of this will get loaded unless you use it, and there will be no extra context-switching if you're not using this feature. And then only when you use it.

  • DO not call feature (Score:3)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2021 @11:15AM (#61775725)
    Will Google control who can call you by requiring opt ins or will it simply follow GMails "if you have their email address" so it simply becomes another spammer's paradise?

    • I dunno. I have never in my history of using hangouts had a spam call or message. I'd guess there will be some opt in a la Hangouts the first time you contact someone?

  • by reading the headline, I was hoping that gmail would answer the cell phone on my behalf, and filter out the robocall spam ...

    • Your spam blocker has an expired warranty. If you act now, we'll give you one last chance to extend it.

  • I am aquiver with breathless anticipation! /s

    Every time Google "redesigns" a product, it gets worse. Once useful features are either removed entirely, or hidden so deeply behind an arcane interface that requires a dedicated effort to find.

    I can't wait to see how they'll screw up Gmail even further.

     

    • I am aquiver with breathless anticipation! /s

      Every time Google "redesigns" a product, it gets worse.

      Until they cancel it, then it is better again.

  • I had forgotten about this site --> https://killedbygoogle.com/ [killedbygoogle.com]

    A walk down memory lane. I've been orphaned a few times too many looking back.

  • Google is now walking down the path of taking what was an excellent app with a single focus and tacking tie-ins to every other aspect of their business into said app resulting in a bloated monstrosity that does everything, but does not do any of them well. Meanwhile the original focus of the product suffers and lags behind competitors because it is overcrowded and encumbered by features that the app was never designed to handle. The Gmail app is now doomed to the same fate as iTunes.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Please forgive me, but I feel like I need to bump one of my old posts. [slashdot.org] as the best possible comment I could make here.

  • Until very recently I was able to make and receive calls to my google voice number inside the Gmail web app. I'll be happy to have the feature back.

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