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A comment on How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare?. Parent comment

Re:How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare? by TeMPOraL on Sunday February 11, 2018 @03:40AM (#16351802)
Not really. That's just yet another instance of web browser, this time with chat-specific tab switching and - as I learned recently - a need to create yet another cloud account...

In Pidgin, you actually had it all in one place, with the UX defined by Pidgin.

That's another bad thing about current fragmentation. You have no way to unify the UX.

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Re:How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare? by Freak_NL on Sunday February 11, 2018 @04:02AM (#16351860)
That's by design of course. The client side software is where the interfacing with the user happens, and if your business model is 'first become huge and indispensable, than figure out a way to monetize', you need absolute control over what the user sees and how they interact with your service.
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Re:How did Google Talk change from a dream to a nightmare? by dTal on Sunday February 11, 2018 @06:52AM (#16352309)
Let's not beat around the bush - if you "need absolute control over what the user sees" so that you can "figure out a way to monetize", then you have already decided that you are monetizing with ads. That is the only possible reason to maintain iron control over the user's eyeballs.

This business practice of pushing the product unsustainably in order to drive out the competition was rightly condemned when WalMart did it. I don't see a similar public backlash in the tech sphere these days.

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