Google Wave? Google Buzz? Google Talk? Google Hangouts? Google Allo? Google Duo? Google Meet? Google chat that came with Google Apps? Or G Suite? Or Google Workspace?
Damn! What kind of research did you have to do to write all those names or did you remember them all? :) They're so many now, I can only remember a few
They'll kill hangouts? I´d say there´s a big danger that instead of switching to yet another Google chat service, ppl will just switch to telegram/whatsap/facebook messenger.
They've already announced its demise. It's just confusing because it'll be migrating into some other service that nobody who doesn't work at Google can distinguish from Hangouts.
Does it? It's not a good comparison. All of those are brand names for a product still offered with continuity of teams between them and while some of the brand names signaled breaks in compatibility for developers using the services, it was still ostensibly the same product. Whereas most of these Google projects were ostensibly entirely different teams with different project goals building externally similar projects because of internal politics.
It's also interesting to note that most of those backwards compatibility breaks in developer APIs in the Microsoft product mentioned have occurred as Microsoft has adapted to changes in (security) standards over the years, from entirely proprietary system, through custom extensions of WS-* and SAML standards, to today's OpenID Connect-based system. It's a very stark contrast to Google's messaging apps which started with the (XMPP) standards-based Google Chat and each subsequent product has been more proprietary, more of a walled garden, and less interoperable with other products.
So for a 1:1 comparison, let's consider the apps that MS has made in this space over the years. Ignoring the semi-annual rebrands and the MS chat products that were killed from before Google even existed (there's surprisingly many!), there's at least:
1. MSN Messenger (+ rebrands)
2. Skype
3. NetMeeting
4. Lync (+ rebrands)
5. Yammer
6. Kaizala
7. Teams
8. SharedView
9. Windows Meeting Space
10. Groove
11. Qik
I tried to err on the side of assuming that any time they killed one product and immediately replaced it with another, it was a rebrand. (E.g. were Office Communicator / Office Live Meeting / Lync / Skype for Business actually compatible? If not, they clearly weren't just rebrands.)
Overall this seems like a very similar amount of churn, product overlap, and politics-driven product management.
Skype, Qik, Yammer, and Groove were all acquisitions. (None of Google's messenger churn has the excuse of being an acquisition.)
Yammer is a social network and if Yammer counts for Microsoft as a "chat app" then Google gets to add Buzz, Reader, Orkut, G+, Wave, etc to the list.
Groove wasn't exactly a chat app either. It was more the P2P bastard child of Lotus Notes (or a P2P relative of SharePoint, sort of, in Microsoft terms). Chat was a feature, but it wasn't the emphasis of the app, the emphasis was more on shared workspaces (folders, documents). Some ideas that have resurfaced elsewhere in O365 and even Teams, though not in the P2P way without big cloud internet services that Groove attempted.
Windows Meeting Space was the last rebrand of NetMeeting, apparently. There's also evidence according to Wikipedia that SharedView piggy backed on the Windows Meeting Space codebase and in some ways was a "trial version" of Windows Meeting Space with different internet services backing it and paid for by ads.
Kaizala is in the process of merging into Teams, and the Lync line (last Skype for Business) is considered to have already merged/migrated. (Except for support of on premises installs which still has a few more years on the clock. Another contrast to Google who has never supported on premises installs, much less for years after the projects died/moved on.)
> Yammer is a social network and if Yammer counts for Microsoft as a "chat app" then Google gets to add Buzz, Reader, Orkut, G+, Wave, etc to the list.
The list of supposed Google chat apps up the thread did in fact include both Buzz and Wave, so I'm just applying the same criteria. Hangouts was the chat part of G+, so I think it'd be double counting to include G+.
> Groove wasn't exactly a chat app either
Neither are Duo and Meet, which were in the list of supposed Google chat apps.
> Kaizala is in the process of merging into Teams, and the Lync line (last Skype for Business) is considered to have already merged/migrated
I don't understand. The entire thing we're supposed to be mocking Google for here is that they launch chat apps, and then force users to migrate away. Now you're saying that all these Microsoft ones don't count, because they've either already killed them and forced a migration, or are already in the process of doing so.
> Skype, Qik, Yammer, and Groove were all acquisitions. (None of Google's messenger churn has the excuse of being an acquisition.)
Fair enough that this is different. But first, note that when Google discontinues a product they got from an acquisition, HN does not consider that to be an exenuating circumstance. I think it's fair to apply the same policy here. And second, nobody forced Microsoft to buy Skype when they already had a popular app doing just the same thing, which they then killed to make room for Skype.
> Neither are Duo and Meet, which were in the list of supposed Google chat apps.
Duo and Meet were video chat apps, which seems to be a part of "chat apps". You did include video chat apps/meeting/conference apps in the Microsoft list.
Groove is more like P2P Google Docs is maybe the closest Google analog. You wouldn't include Google Docs as a chat app would you? (Although I do know some folks that use it as such.)
>> Kaizala is in the process of merging into Teams, and the Lync line (last Skype for Business) is considered to have already merged/migrated
> I don't understand. The entire thing we're supposed to be mocking Google for here is that they launch chat apps, and then force users to migrate away. Now you're saying that all these Microsoft ones don't count, because they've either already killed them and forced a migration, or are already in the process of doing so.
I wasn't saying that they don't count, I was simply furthering the conversation on exactly that sort of semantic question, and relatedly also this one:
> Hangouts was the chat part of G+, so I think it'd be double counting to include G+.
While the clients are nothing alike and there's a backcompat break in the servers, Lync/S4B provided the foundations for the tech that became Teams' voice and video chat. Does that make Lync the "chat part" of Teams? (Hangouts was also a briefly separate "product" before G+ and then again briefly after.)
Kaizala I don't know anything about directly, but what I was reading suggested that it has a ton of features, especially for bandwidth limited networks, that have never been a part of Teams before whenever the merger is supposed to happen and those features are added to Teams. When those features merge, does that make Kaizala a part of Teams? Supposedly (according to sources cited by Wikipedia) Microsoft has even been considering a "powered by Kaizala" sub-branding on those features, for the target users. If there is a "Kaizala part" of Teams, is that double counting?
> And second, nobody forced Microsoft to buy Skype when they already had a popular app doing just the same thing, which they then killed to make room for Skype.
Windows Live Messenger and Skype lived side-by-side for several years and Microsoft at the time was criticized by confusingly marketing both and keeping both alive. From what I saw as an outside observer, WLM died by its own hand and a death of a thousand papercuts. Skype, too, seems to be on the long path of killing itself with self-inflicted papercuts. I do admit both of those sad tales seem politically similar to what we observe of Google's chat efforts. That's two products I definitely feel are comparable to all that.
There was also MSN, and then on the side there was your Xbox Live account and your Games for Windows Live account. I think mine have all been merged at this point, but people at my job still click on the "work" account when they really want their personal (we don't use 365) and are confused when their account is empty.
Tangential question, is the new Google Pay a completely separate product from the old Google wallet? Because a lot of the functionality seems to be the same but I get the impression it was probably re-implemented since a lot of that functionally was removed from Google wallet years ago.
I would love to that you are right - but it not so easy.
I have two G Suite domains and I'm utterly and absolutely confused.
- in one domain I have "Chat" just under "Important" messages. But somehow I cannot send any chats. I see only chats from 2018 or so (when they shutdown Gmail Chat). The cool thing is that they look like read email messages. But I cannot send any chat.
- in other domain I have "Hangouts" but no Chat.
I hope this real world example illustrates why parent comment is correct when asking "Which one?".
The "Chats" under "Important" is a gmail tag/label for the messages that are archived into your gmail account from the messaging app.
Messages sent in Google Hangouts on my own domain today show up in my email under the "Chats" label, so this functionality is still working -- if you use the right/latest app, I guess.
The mobile Google Chat still doesn't let you switch accounts, like Hangouts supports. Perplexing, given how much people in the Google-sphere context switch.
For me there's a profile picture in the top right that opens an account dialog, from where a single tap switches to any other account. Do you mean something beyond that?
I see Meet, but not Chat, and none of my Chats show up in the Gmail app (iOS), and there's a separate Chat app (which doesn't do the account switching I mentioned).
Makes it more difficult to switch between Gmail and Meet though (to look something up while in a meeting) since they are now conjoined into the same app.
I can understand Facebook or WeChat building everything into the same app, making the app into an inner platform within the platform, but when Google already control the outer platform it doesn't make much sense.
You click the video button, switch tabs, and click the screen share button. I agree that chat sucks compared to slack and teams, but it's got enough functionality to not be a deal breaker for companies that are already paying gSuite. Especially if they've never used the superior competitors.
I don't think that's right, it's called Workplace now and I don't think it's been that long since they changed up the name. https://workspace.google.com/
No I mean the product that constitutes gsuite hasn't existed for 20 years. Gmail is 2004. drive, which is really the start of gsuite, is only 8 years old.
As far I can tell Google currently has two products called "Google Chat". One of them is available at chat.google.com for G-Suite customers and competes with Slack. The other is available in Android Messages and is the user-facing name for RCS.
Right, but OP was listing chat apps to say how many Google killed. Allo was the analogous chat app that was released in tandem with duo. Duo is not a chat app.
Which one?
Google Wave? Google Buzz? Google Talk? Google Hangouts? Google Allo? Google Duo? Google Meet? Google chat that came with Google Apps? Or G Suite? Or Google Workspace?