[AaronFriel]

Poe's Law as applied to enterprise messaging platforms.

Dear Google,

Please make one amazing chat app. Just one. Merge Allo, Duo, Chat, Hangouts, Meet, Messenger, Voice, and your RCS platform into one extensible platform with third party integrations.

The comments in this thread? They are not flattering. It is not a sign of joy that people comment on Google releasing a new chat app, or confusing your branding even further.

Here's a quick question: I have a friend on Android, I have an iPhone, how do I message them? What's your best solution. What if I want to switch from messaging to voice? What if I want to make a video call? What if I want to invite a third person? iPhones make it easy to transition between different types of communication, and provide useful SMS sync to computers.

Slack, Microsoft's Teams, and surprisingly Discord, are all moving in the direction of being a single hub for communication. Admittedly, Slack and Teams don't make it easy (yet) to message people outside your organization. Discord does, and they're beating you to the punch, quelle surprise. All of the above platforms are easy to set up on the web and smartphones.

So please, please stop this proliferation. Stop footgunning yourselves on messaging platforms. Build one, make it amazing, and devote resources to making it work for users and organizations.

[ucaetano]

Why stop there? Gmail is communications as well, so include email too. And snail mail too, so add Fedex/UPS service into it. And fax, we can't forget about fax.

But hey, connectivity is just a section of productivity, and docs, slides, sheets, drive is all productivity, so add it all to the same app, as well as google plus. You also use the app store to get your company's apps, so add the play store as well.

Finding the destination for a business meeting is also productivity, so add maps inside it as well, and translate, since you might be running meetings and emails in different languages, plus keep for note-taking, calendar, my business, contacts, forms, groups, etc.

Congrats, you just designed Lotus Notes.

Or Android.

[AstralStorm]

Lotus Notes didn't have video, and sound or real-time chat functionality. It does integrate a spreadsheet, decent word processor, calendar and task list. Google Docs with its Calendar and Gmail integration is close enough.

Integrating different use cases is different from interoperability. For example, make it easy to share a file on drive via email and chat does not require drive to be integrated. Likewise meet (new contacts, social net) vs chat (known contacts, rooms) might be a good split if they interact nicely together.

Splitting chat from email is a stretch, much like with voice from text or from video. Or simple images.

What Google is doing is create apps that do not work together with each other.

[ucaetano]

Lotus Notes did have chat. And voice. And IPTV. And fax services. And databases. HR tools. Expense tools. Business process tools and whatever else you can think of.

And the apps do work together, apparently. From the announcement they're integrated with Drive and the entire permission system. I'd guess there are far more integrations to come.

[r00fus]

I think you're being a bit hyperbolic - everyone seems to see snail mail / fax as quite different from electronic communication methods.

I've found most people tend to see email as the "slow/deliberate" electronic communication, and IM/Messages/SMS as the "fast/extemporaneous", so even conflating GMail doesn't really make sense (why do you think Wave failed?).

[laughfactory]

Oh come on, this is a ridiculous argument. He's asking for what most of us want: a unified SMS and video calling app for our phones. I too would prefer they just fixed and refined Hangouts, rather than muddy the picture with a host of new options. This is what we call fragmentation. I just want some ubiquitous communications app which allows me to text and video call my friends and family no matter if they're on iPhone or Android. Hangouts was going to do this, but apparently now they've pivoted...But I'm not going to go through the hassle of getting all my friends and family to switch to some new app. So I'm disgruntled too.

We don't want one app which does literally everything, just one app for all our mobile communications: primarily SMS and video calling these days.

[ucaetano]

He's asking for what most of us want: a unified SMS and video calling app for our phones.

Is that what you want or what most people want? I like WhatsApp more than Allo/Duo, especially for the desktop integration and a few other features, but I'm a dinosaur who uses desktop. Nobody uses desktop anymore, but until Google launches a desktop client, my hate of typing on a smartphone keyboard will keep me away from those apps. If they launch, I'd guess that my existing network on WhatsApp will keep me away from them as well.

"They're not addressing my own usage profile" != "They are not addressing a large % of the potential users".

[bryanlarsen]

It seems to me like they are aiming to make one amazing chat app. It's called GSuite.

For example, it'd be very useful if you could collaboratively edit a document in a chat app. So should your uber chat app swallow Google Docs too? That would be a beast, and the HN would scream.

No, you make a bunch of smaller apps that embed, interoperate and integrate.

And once you've built a bunch of integration points for your own apps, then you document them and make them available to third parties. Voila first-class fully dog-fooded integration points rather than third party integrations being distinctly second class citizens.

[buckbova]

> I have a friend on Android, I have an iPhone, how do I message them? What's your best solution. What if I want to switch from messaging to voice?

Install hangouts on the iphone. It's not going anywhere anytime soon.

Or you can have your friend install iMessage on the android. Wait apple doesn't port it's apps to android? I'm stunned.

[rovek]

+1 to this.

I think one party or other will always have to maintain an additional app to support that use case. I have a group chat with a few friends who have flitted between Android and iOS and the group has continued seamlessly for years.

I'm not sure if there's a reason to go Hangouts over Whatsapp, other than both parties having to maintain an additional app

[threeseed]

Hangouts isn't going anywhere ?

We've all heard that many times before and with so many other apps duplicating Hangouts functionality I wouldn't be so confident.

[buckbova]

The previous incarnation of what's now hangouts was seamlessly updated on whatever phone I had at the time when it was phased out. I don't even remember the name because it doesn't matter. Been on android since froyo without issue of the messenger app being retired.

It's not going anywhere anytime soon like I said and when it does, it'll get updated with the next thing and still have chat, voice, and video.

[NTDF9]

>> Please make one amazing chat app. Just one. Merge Allo, Duo, Chat, Hangouts, Meet, Messenger, Voice, and your RCS platform into one extensible platform with third party integrations.

But then how will their under utilized engineers get a promotion?

[bborud]

This. A thousand times this.

First I stopped using Google+ (I mean: it isn't any good). Then over time I stopped logging Adium into Google Talk, because fewer and fewer people I know use it. I never started using Allo or Duo.

[balladeer]

I found it utterly useless. But what made me finally give up on it for good was their G+ username (handle) policy.

They had already decided the first X characters of my handle (FirstnameLastname______) and then I had to add something to it. And not at all any of the usernames I wanted were taken. Some are still not taken. I realised this worthless piece of software/service isn't worth the time and Google has been proving it since then.

I tested Allo and Duo the day it was released. That's it. Work has GSuite so have to use Hangouts.

[eric_the_read]

I have a friend who's still using Google Talk via her corporate IT solution, whose name I forget; she and my wife are the only two I know of still using it. I could probably convince my wife to switch to Allo, but my friend can't integrate it with her corporate solution, so switching basically means I can't chat with her anymore.

[oomkiller]

Monolithic apps suffer from design for the least common denominator. Business team chat and calling/texting your friend are entirely different problems and deserve different solutions.

[AaronFriel]

I would suggest you check out Discord, which works well for both the team and individual use cases in one user interface. The way they accomplish this is by having "Friends" (a familiar analogy for anyone who has used chat applications from the 2000s and current social media) as well as "Servers", which are akin to teams.

Joining servers is very easy, creating servers - they are perhaps inaccurately named - is instantaneous, and each server can contain groups, voice and text channels. Adding friends is easy, and from the friends menu it's easy to message or begin a call with anyone and create ad hoc group chats and calls.

Perhaps your belief that they are entirely different problems and necessitate different solutions is based in the fact that they the market has thus far assumed that to be true.

[joshuamorton]

I've used discord. My family is never going to use discord or a discord-like app. For that, we need sms or MMS.

One of the problems with discord is that it becomes very bloated to use (fromm mobile). It takes 3-4 interactions to get to the friends list so I can message someone. With sms/mms/allo/fb messenger, I open the app and my friends list is just right there, staring me in the face.

Optimized for different usecases comes to mind.

[AstralStorm]

Hmm, my version of Discord either points me at the friends list or restores previous state with 2 or 3 taps max to message a friend. (top left hamburger menu, tap friends, pick a friend)

Is what you describe specific to iOS version?

What is missing most is video chat.

[joshuamorton]

I was speakng about android. I think there's a vast difference between 0 and 2-3 interactions. I mean in many ways, Discord is 2 apps in one, you swap between them by swapping between the servers and friends views, and I think its worth recognizing that fact.

[oomkiller]

Why would an Allo/Duo user ever want to join a server, or something analogous? They just want to call or message their friend. I think it's obvious to merge some of their consumer point to point apps, but criticizing their group chat solution because they have consumer point-to-point apps is wrong.

[IanCal]

Do you never want to talk to more than one person? I don't see why talking to one person is one app but adding another person means we need to stop, hangup, open a new app and reconnect.

[cwyers]

But Google doesn't segment their chat products based on target market, they segment it based on business unit. Google is just really unafraid of competing with Google in the marketplace, apparently.

[ucaetano]

Target market: enterprise

* Video-conferencing & meeting: Hangouts Meet

* Direct messaging & team communication: Hangouts Chat

Target market: consumer

* Video & audio calling: Duo

* Text messaging: Allo

You could even put it in a 2x2, doesn't get any more clear than this.

[pound]

OK, so here is consumer case: weekly video call to parents, who live separately. Duo? 1-on-1. Hangouts Meet? enterprise. Original Hangouts? Who knows how long it will be here, but hey, Google Voice suddenly got updated after 5 years of neglect. Doesn't get any more clear than this.

[ucaetano]

I'm not saying that they cover every use-case, just that now they have a very clear targeting.

If they don't support your use-case, use someone else's product.

[pound]

but is this use case seems that exotic to you?

it's not a 'consumer' target then, but a '1-on-1' use case => segmenting by use cases

[laughfactory]

It's clear, all right, but I don't want FOUR apps to do what one should.

And none of the supporting arguments for this change have been persuasive to me. This is just x4 fragmentation, if you ask me.

[accountface]

This is spot on. TONS of people are using Slack in their personal lives because it's a good chat app. It doesn't matter if it was originally built to support business teams.

[laughfactory]

Yep! I use Slack with friends, family, and work. Great app, and I like that it's all right there.

[ojiikun]

> Please make one amazing chat app. Just one. Merge Allo, Duo, Chat, Hangouts, Meet, Messenger, Voice, and your RCS platform into one extensible platform with third party integrations.

all of us who heavily invested in Wave are laughing so hard we are coughing up blood.

[manojlds]

Slack has guests support