Currently, you would probably rank Google’s offerings behind every other big-tech competitor. A lack of any kind of top-down messaging leadership at Google has led to a decade and a half of messaging purgatory, with Google both unable to leave the space altogether and unable to commit to a single product. While companies like Facebook and Salesforce invest tens of billions of dollars into a lone messaging app, Google seems content only to spin up an innumerable number of under-funded, unstable side projects led by job-hopping project managers. There have been periods when Google briefly produced a good messaging solution, but the constant shutdowns, focus-shifting, and sabotage of established products have stopped Google from carrying much of these user bases—or user goodwill—forward into the present day.
Because no single company has ever failed at something this badly, for this long, with this many different products (and because it has barely been a month since the rollout of Google Chat), the time has come to outline the history of Google messaging. Prepare yourselves, dear readers, for a non-stop rollercoaster of new product launches, neglected established products, unexpected shut-downs, and legions of confused, frustrated, and exiled users.
This is delightfully depressing.
I’m glad they failed. So much of our data goes to Google, whether we want it or not. Imagine if they read our messages, too. (Not that Facebook is much better…)
You mean Whatsapp and Instagram ? Naaah, nobody use that…
Google is arguably the modern Bell Labs. The company is far more interested in doing cool research than creating polished commercial products. As long as the search business provides the funding to pay for the research they are happy.
At this point, Android is headed to the same kind of mass user exodus that Symbian and Windows Mobile went Apple has already established a “messaging ecosystem” in the US (to the point that not having iMessage can make you a social outcast in certain circles in the US, including work environments). Apple is also establishing a “payments ecosystem” and a “wearables/fitness ecosystem” worldwide while Google is once again at sleep.
BTW, I was there when the first exodus from Symbian and Windows Mobile happened. I was one of the last people to leave Symbian and a friend of mine was one of the last people to leave Windows Mobile. But eventually, staying in these OSes stopped making sense due to the apps situation, so we left. Mind you we didn’t burn out existing smartphones in protest or anything, we just made sure our next devices were Android (which had the basic apps covered). But I bet several PHBs in Nokia and Microsoft expected at least some of us to make repeat purchases into the Symbian and WinMo ecosystem. But guess what, none of us did.
Android is going through the same thing right now. People in the US are already moving to iOS so they can have iMessage, and places accepting Apple Pay are multiplying. Soon, credit cards will become a hassle, just like ordering from the telephone did. Farewell Android, you served us well.
Needless to say, it was a big mistake to fire Eric Schmidt and replace him with people who don’t have a clue on how to run a company the size of Google. Imagine if Larry Page or Sundar Pichai were at the helm of Google in the late 2000s. Google would have presented 3 different mobile OSes and 5 different app stores or something.
Instead, Eric Schmidt had the guts to say “I don’t care if you hate Android, I don’t care if there are reasons to hate Android, we are throwing our weight behind it as a company, period.”
The US is 4% of the global population. The rest of the world would barely notice if Apple disappeared tomorrow,
Telecoms operators will be turning into bit shufflers when POTS is turned off. They are already 90% there with the phone network having gone digital years ago. Point to point is available if you are insanely rich or a government but everyone else has been on IP for years now. The real issue is there needs to be a universal protool for ommuniations. I have no interest whatsoever in feeding a corporate especially a corporate serving a loud and greedy dog-eat-dog economy which is America. I just want something which works without having to deal with feature creep or IPO of the week or being a bullet point for some dad dancing CEO delivering their annual TED talk. Nor do I want my life disrupted because some kneejerk American politician on the take is throwing a snot like they did with 5G.
Can you make one post without off-topic bits inside?
“protool for ommuniations”
The C key stopped working there. Typing on a MacBook Butterfly keyboard?
Not to defend Google, but what else is similarly usable and available? With friends we end up sticking with a chat room which automatically moved from Hangouts to Google Chat (and stills works in Pidgin).
We all have used gmail addresses to chat for many years on the various Google offerings. Many other services seem to require a specific smart phone, which I don’t happen to have. While my friends I think use their smart phone to communicate in our chat room, one told me I had better not get a smart phone and would not want to create a situation where one is necessary just to chat.
Google should have gone all-in on Hangouts and make it the default SMS app. I don’t expect Google to go the standards way (those days are over), but the fact they couldn’t get a default SMS app and allowed everything to iMessage to dominate in the US is some major incompetence. Or malice, considering how close Android is to carriers.