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Brenden Mulligan

Hangouts Chat by Google - Intelligent team communication

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Hangouts Chat is an intelligent and secure communications tool, built for teams. From direct messages to group conversations, Chat makes team communication easy and efficient. Rolling out for all G Suite customers over the next week.

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Hayden Evans
Another day, another messaging product from Google. Google Hangouts Chat. Their approach to messaging is so confusing at this point that just the name sounds ridiculous. It’s like a collection of all their prior failed attempts in a list. Next year it will be Google Allo Duo Hangouts Chat.
Adheen Ajay
@hayden_evans At least this time, Google decided not to go ahead with a new app name. We should appreciate that. :D
Hayden Evans
@adheen_ajay Don't worry, they'll just release a new app with a new name that does the same thing in a few months at Google I/O. And once again, people will be confused about which one they should use, the user base will be split amongst two competing ideas, and Google will kill both off a year later after both fail to gain significant traffic over the other. Rinse and repeat.
Adheen Ajay
@hayden_evans Hah! Lol. Google started this journey with GTalk, right? That was for text alone. Then Hangout: for text, images, and later live video, Allo: for the same but with google assistant- and without live video isn't? Now new Hangouts Chat for GSuite. Did I miss anything here?
Catalin Pop
@hayden_evans I actually liked Google Talk when it was launched 15 years ago as a response to Yahoo messenger(if anyone remember). I liked the app, the name, it was nice, clean, fast. Not sure why they didn't invest more time in that direction .
Scott Johnston
Maker
@hayden_evans My goal is to launch 9 more Google messaging apps this quarter, but I've only managed to launch Hangouts Chat and it is just the next gen Hangouts product. So I might not be getting exceeds expectations this cycle.
Jeff Eisley
Google Talk Google Voice Google/Android Messages Google Wave Google Plus (Huddle & Hangouts) Google Hangouts Google Allo Google Duo Google Hangouts Meet Google Hangouts Chat Google Chat I think this list explains it all!
Hayden Evans
@jeffeisley WTF is Hangouts Meet? LOL
Alexey Fedorov
@jeffeisley LOL. You forgot Google Message and Google Plus. :)
Scott Johnston
Maker
Jeff Eisley
@hayden_evans Essentially the video component competitor to Slack & Skype --> https://meet.google.com
Jeff Eisley
@afedorovn Oh damn, you're right! Good catch
Nick Abouzeid
Very cool @mulligan! What are the advantages of using Hangouts Chat over Slack? What features are you most excited about?
Pedro Vieira
@mulligan @nickabouzeid I'd like to know this as well. I've been using Slack for a long time but now this space is so crowded that all seem the same.
Mike Ritchie
@mulligan @nickabouzeid One advantage is having conversations within a doc (e.g. Google Sheets or Docs) while a group is editing and keeping the conversation tied to that document. I could see that being helpful for documenting decisions.
Bhargav Shah
Always wanted Google to build this. Great work! Can we say HipChat killer as well? :P
Hayden Evans
@aria_bos Let’s be real - it’s a messaging product from Google. They’ll release 3 other products that do the exact same thing within 2 years and then end up abandoning all of them in 3.
Bhargav Shah
@hayden_evans The fact that users like us would still use it because it’s engineered by Google. They rarely get into a space which doesn’t provide value to the users.
Hayden Evans
@aria_bos they also rarely support a messaging product beyond 3 years.
Bhargav Shah
@hayden_evans Agreed. Why don't we use BBM?
Hayden Evans
@aria_bos In BlackBerry's defense, BBM was at least a solid, cohesive vision of messaging. BlackBerry screwed that up by stagnating on the software side of their phones.
Aubron Wood

So I was extremely excited by the EAP, and the subsequent release, but both times I've found it extremely lacking. The windows app feels like an afterthought. Security key logins don't work, and it seems to just be chat.google.com running in a knockoff electron. It has an ugly stock windows toolbar that disrupts the UI, and once you arrive in the product things don't really improve. I can't talk to someone outside of my gsuite domain, and they can't be invited to rooms I've created. The site says that 'To help make your chat experience seamless, all your Chat conversations will sync with your classic Hangouts experience.', but that's either not working for me, or not a thing yet, as I can't get PM or group conversations in inbox. Add to that that I don't really buy in to every conversation being a thread (slack 'threads' tend to be the worst feature in their platform), and this ends up being a non-starter for us.

Recurring theme in gsuite: excitement followed by frustration at the little things. Can't use google home fully with gsuite accounts. The constant barrage of new chat solutions and early retirement of old ones. The announcement of a meeting telepresence solution, as long as anyone you ever want to invite uses chrome. It's hard to have faith in a GSuite solution anymore. The core remains strong, but the new individual products always seem to veer off short of being usable.

Pros:

Lots of potential here, search seems good

Cons:

Clunky, Feature Sparse, and coming from a poor track record of comms @ Google

ronsheridan
This is going to be interesting. I use Flock.com (because a friend made it) and I use Slack a lot, but I will try this as I am a big Google Apps user and use it on all my teams. Google entering this space means the space has become very real to them. However, we have seen Google make big entrances in big spaces and then slink out with their tail behind their legs (Google Plus, Google Keep etc). But given Google's dominance in apps, email etc, I see them being able to gain some traction here. Pass the popcorn...
Duarte Martins
@ronsheridan What's wrong with google keep?
ronsheridan
@duarteosrm I did not say there was anything wrong with Keep. To be clear, I don't see anything "wrong" with Keep. I was trying to make the point that Keep was Google's answer to a big market (Evernote, OnePoint etc...), and while it did jump out of the water in grand fashion, it quickly ended up as a shiny object floundering on the shore. While Keep is clearly not dead and has a strong community of users, it's performance has been underwhelming imo. In fact, after Keep's launch, I started a blog about Keep. But I quickly lost interest. It seems that a lot of others did as well.
Duarte Martins
@ronsheridan Fair enough. I personally never saw it as a competitor to those more complete note taking apps, more a cloud based competitor to Apple Notes.
Ben Clark
can this run on my nokia 3310
Bhargav Shah
@beenjamemes Hah! Well, Elon has better things to do but maybe ask him? 😬
Damjanski
@beenjamemes <3 your username!
Matt Scott Crum
Still showing up as apart of an EAP for me.
Matt Scott Crum
It's opened up for me now!
Michael Klein

I don't know - I think Google has really a big problem whats important and what not. I don't see that I or any company will really use it, except when they use hangouts already. I moved any private stuff and especially work related stuff to slack or WhatsApp.

I would have welcomed if they would improve GoogleMail or would have improved hangouts in general for all users instead of making a half baked attempt with this.

Pros:

It's Hangouts...

Cons:

no new features

no added security, no end-to-end encryption option - useless for EU

no real desktop app for integration

Parthi Loganathan
Maker
JS
It will be available for non gsuite users?
Jon Moore
@jordanslon doesn't appear so. You can't use @gmail accounts, nor any Google Apps Legacy accounts
Miguel Martín
@jordanslon only for Google Suits accounts.
Scott Johnston
Maker
@jordanslon Not yet, but working on that now
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