Updates to our Google Voice apps

Re:Updates to our Google Voice apps by MrMetlHed on Monday January 23, 2017 @01:09PM (#13464302)

Why didn't they just improve Hangouts? I don't know anyone that uses Allo and as far as I know there's no desktop client. I linked Voice to Hangouts so I could get all of my messages in one app on both my phone and within gmail. Now it seems like they want me to split everything up between 3 apps (Voice for SMS, Allo for chat on mobile, and Hangouts for chat on my computer) that fewer and fewer people are using.

Why on earth didn't they just improve Hangouts?

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Re:Updates to our Google Voice apps by brianjking on Monday January 23, 2017 @02:28PM (#13465121)

I'm a Voice and Hangouts user that would love to use Allo. Well, actually, let me rephrase - I'd love to have Hangouts have Allo's features such as the Google Assistant integration and emoji. Allo just added to the segmentation mess that is Google Messaging, who knows what is going on anymore.

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Re:Updates to our Google Voice apps by awiesen on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @11:47AM (#13472970)

We did a user survey a year and a half ago, got a flood of feedback, and overwhelmingly users asked us to invest in the Google Voice standalone experience. It didn't mean that there aren't passionate users who want the Hangouts version.

Despite what a lot of the threads here are saying, honestly we did this based on user feedback and user research. Most people wanted this, even if they're not all on HN.

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Re:Updates to our Google Voice apps by hendersoon on Monday January 23, 2017 @07:45PM (#13467831)

I only use Hangouts for google voice, but I would prefer this as well-- I want one unified messaging platform that also handles SMS and POTS phonecalls. That was the promise of Hangouts.

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