Google is dead - A rotting corpse. The people who made masterpieces were already thinking about leaving when I joined in 2010, the people who were really solid (many geniuses) are leaving now in droves. The management aren't asleep at the wheel - They're pointing in, effectively, the right directions. They just don't understand why they're losing speed.

Google is unfortunately a really solidly built ship sitting on a ton of cash and a really valuable resource whose proceeds are currently going to the parasites clinging to it's shell. The thing that made them great - Search - is still solid, and is large enough and ahead enough that it can sit still, even go backwards, and people will continue to use them for many years to come. Their money faucet, ads, went from being unobtrusive and helpful to obnoxious and exploitative to cover for the lack of forward movement of the giant it stands upon.

All that said - Google still has some great people, a great mission, and amazing tech that's still years ahead of the rest of the world. It's stock will continue to go up with Wall Street. It just isn't the place it used to be - Though, like all nostalgia, I wonder if it ever was.

"Google is unfortunately a really solidly built ship"

Why is this unfortunate? Isn't this a byproduct of their success they've had over the years? Sure, they haven't had many blowout successes in recent time, but still.

It's unfortunate because the people operating the ship and deriving profit from it aren't the ones who built it. Truth be told, I don't much like the people who work for Google now. There's still plenty of good people there, the median person is still a very good engineer and a nice person. It's the people who don't care and are looking for profit and promotion, and even the people who are just careless with the immense power and data that Google has, who scare me.

> It's stock will continue to go up with Wall Street. It just isn't the place it used to be - Though, like all nostalgia, I wonder if it ever was.

Well then who the hell cares, besides you?

Ignoring general Android features, their pixel phones have a lot of unique software, especially around Photos.

They're showing off a lot of Assistant features. Duplex is launching soon.

They're pushing a lot of ChromeOS features by adding Android App support.

Did streaming TV on Youtube come out this year?

They have a beta of their game streaming service that came out a month or two ago.

That's off the top of my head. There's a ton of smaller apps they throw at the wall all the time too.

I think the Gmail redesign (which is a huge resource hog) and Google Meet (hangouts video replacement) were released in the last year or so.

I'm not too hip on Google products, so there's probably more that I'm missing.

Yeah and it's still rolling out slowly (or maybe the old version was still cached). Have a family member with a low-power desktop that works fine for general web browsing, video watching, email checking, and it used to be fine.

New gmail (even with hover actions turned off) is an absolute performance mess. Even just scrolling down the list of emails is choppy.

Never had a problem until now. I have no idea what Google is doing, but whatever it is there's a good chance they'll keep screwing it up

Google Duo would probably replace Hangouts

Google Due cannot be a replacement for Hangouts without a serious overhaul:

* Duo is linked via phones, not Google accounts * Duo is strictly peer-to-peer, not for groups * Duo is video/audio only, no chat/text

So, it could be a Duo-like replacement for Hangouts, maybe. But not a complete replacement. A merger of Allo + Duo (does anyone here know what Allo is?) could check some of these boxes. But one of the primary appeals of Duo is E2E encryption, and that is not in Google's interests in the long run.

There could be value in Google having an E2E encrypted messaging service if for no other reason than taking users from their competitors and keeping them in the Google ecosystem.

Google has actually been making improvements to their Google Voice client again, and it is looking descent. I'm thinking the issue is they don't have a Slack/MatterMost/Zulip/Discord/Matrix type of chat client and that is what is in style now. Truly Hangouts is not setup for Teams using ChatOps, nor managing multiple channels for Enterprises.

Though, to note, Google Voice is US-only.

There's a lot of non-coding work involved in launching in a given country. Years ago, not long after GrandCentral became GV, there was a project to launch in a second country, but the effort just stalled for a variety of reasons and got cancelled. It was going to work differently from the US one because it would have lived in other market realities altogether.

How long has Google Voice been around, more than a decade? Excuses are wearing very thin. Their failure to come to Europe is the whole reason Skype exists.

I doubt it will ever come, especially to Europe. I don't think any international expansion was ever promised. I haven't worked at Google in years, so I don't know anything about current and future plans. It would be a stunning, but welcome surprise.

That was launched in 2016. My question to the OP was about their product-launching abilities. They seem rather slow on the consumer software front, i.e. they don't seem to be launching new products (or even updating existing) at the same rate that they're retiring them.

Like the article says Google Hangouts Chat will replace Hangouts. Chat even has hangouts classic backwards compatibility.

If it's backward compatible, why would they kill Hangouts, instead of just upgrading everyone automatically and calling it version 2? Google makes no damned sense. With all of the confusing product names, I can't figure out what they even want me, a regular Hangouts user, to do.

Chat can support Hangouts features but not vice versa.

And Windows 10 can run programs written for Windows 7 and not vice versa... so as the above commenter said, why not just call it version 2 and upgrade everyone?

But yeah, I guesss Google's culture leads to a lot of dick waving competitions...

Google Chat is a horrible experience and I would advise anyone serious about communications at their company to seriously consider alternatives. I am currently forced to use it. I have documented multiple bugs in a blog post here and I have reported each one to Google multiple times without any fixes being made. We are a paying client for G Suites.

https://technex.us/2018/11/google_chat_is_the_worst_desktop_...