tl;dr: after pushing rcs so hard for years, killing hangouts well after forgetting about it, & hiding it from gmail, google now wants you to use its (and google allo’s) successor, google chat.
I gave up once Wave was killed. It was the best of them.
I always used to use Hangouts as my default chat app for friends. We had a big DnD group chat on it. But we migrated to WhatsApp when Google said they were going to kill hangouts and never looked back.
Why would I trust Google with my chats when they constantly abandon/kill off their best tools. We’ve now moved to Signal and I’m expecting to stay there for a long time.
I’ve seen a lot of buzz about XMPP lately (well, mostly in relation to P92 and corps killing FOSS projects). Beyond it being a comm protocol, I don’t really know much about it. Is it still in use?
The article says
Just to recap: Google Talk (gchat) > Google Hangouts > Hangouts Chat > Google Chat
but of course that’s only part of the story. Here’s a longer recap from 2021.
Seriously. I’m quite a Google maximalist (yea, I know, spare me) and a young-ish not-that-old IT nerd. But even I have lost track of which chat app is currently the supported one / the successor of all the dead ones, and how to get is / use it (well, particularly on the web). If I’m confused, I can’t imagine how it is for the average internet user or old people.
Absolutely. What I’m looking for is actually an Alternative to Skype on the Desktop, that is simple enough to use for my mother. Discord is too overloaded for her. Hangouts would have worked. Maybe Google Chat could fill the gap, I don’t even know what it can and can’t, despite relying Google products heavily. I literally gave up trying to follow their chat efforts years ago.
My D&D group uses it for planning. It’s basically the only context where I use it. It’s suitable to the task, but doesn’t really have any distinguishing features.
