Re:Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
by dcposch on Thursday December 31, 2020 @03:14PM
(#25596650)
Speaking of organizational mess and product decisions...
I find it shocking how bad Hangouts is.
It's so convenient. Chat, built right into Gmail. It works. But. BUT.
- It does not support video. Drop in a video, and you get a bizarre error message telling you to try "JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and HEIFimage files" (sic) instead. https://twitter.com/dcposch/status/1303193761313206272
- Tiny little chat windows. No replies, no reactions. Basic UX that feels like abandonware from 2010.
- If you have Google Fi, you can take phone calls thru Hangouts, but you cannot send or receive text messages (??)
I just feel bad for whatever rump team of a few engineers has to maintain that product. They are plainly caught on the wrong end of some strange and gross internal politics.
Google has a self-defeating practice of emphasizing "new products shipped" in their promotion packets. That probably explains why their army of PMs has, instead of improving Hangouts for a billion Gmail users, chosen to create the following instead: Google Meet, Duo, "Google Chat", and an endless parade of now-cancelled apps like Allo.
I find it shocking how bad Hangouts is.
It's so convenient. Chat, built right into Gmail. It works. But. BUT.
- It does not support video. Drop in a video, and you get a bizarre error message telling you to try "JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and HEIFimage files" (sic) instead. https://twitter.com/dcposch/status/1303193761313206272
- Tiny little chat windows. No replies, no reactions. Basic UX that feels like abandonware from 2010.
- If you have Google Fi, you can take phone calls thru Hangouts, but you cannot send or receive text messages (??)
I just feel bad for whatever rump team of a few engineers has to maintain that product. They are plainly caught on the wrong end of some strange and gross internal politics.
Google has a self-defeating practice of emphasizing "new products shipped" in their promotion packets. That probably explains why their army of PMs has, instead of improving Hangouts for a billion Gmail users, chosen to create the following instead: Google Meet, Duo, "Google Chat", and an endless parade of now-cancelled apps like Allo.