Google Abandons Their Google Hangouts API (techcrunch.com)

"Once again we're seeing the hazards of developing using a third party service API," writes Slashdot reader BarbaraHudson, reporting that Google "will be discontinuing support for the Google Hangouts API going forward... Google Hangouts is now so insignificant that the cancellation didn't even rate an official blog post. As reported by TechCrunch, "just an updated FAQ and email notification to developers active on the API, forwarded to us by one of these devs." TechCrunch writes: As Google pushes Duo as its consumer video chat app and relegates Hangouts to the enterprise, it's dropping the flexibility to build these kinds of experiences. The email explains... "We understand this will impact developers who have invested in our platform. We have carefully considered this change and believe that it allows us to give our users a more targeted Hangouts desktop video experience going forward."
TechCrunch calls the move "a casualty of Google's fragmented messaging app strategy and the neglect of Hangouts itself." While some apps will continue working -- for example, integration with Slack -- their API's FAQ now ends with a reminder that "Users of apps will see a notice in the call letting them know that the app they're using will no longer work after April 25th."

Comments

Good Riddance

[Khyber]

Hangouts should've been renamed to Hangups. Connection issues were so rampant, and was one of the primary reasons Google Helpouts failed so badly.

Re: Good Riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it should be called Giveup instead.

That's what Google do to every other service except search.

Re: Good Riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but they can't name all of their projects "Giveup"... or can they.

Re:Good Riddance

[PoopJuggler]

I've used Hangouts every day for the past few years and never had a problem that wasn't IT related. Hangouts is fantastic if you use Google for email, photos, etc.. because all their products integrate with all their other products. It's really quite impressive from a software engineering standpoint.

Re: Good Riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly makes it so impressive from a software engineering aspect? The fact that it works well with their own products? Thats nothing new, apphole and microsoft have been doing that for decades.

Re: Good Riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

Seamless integration across web, desktop and mobile between all their apps. How, exactly, has Microsoft been doing this for "decades". If anything, they've been fighting it for decades which is why they're at the back of pack now.

Re:Good Riddance

[shaitand]

Why? Does anyone actually bother with voice/video anymore? It's nice to know those features are there but basically hangouts was just the annoying replacement for google chat and it is a handy IM app that neither requires me to find someone on Facebook nor requires me to use my phone when I'm sitting at a real keyboard. Also it supports group messaging... my work peers and eye have kept a "hangout" open for a few years now for comments when we aren't officially available at work and things we'd rather not say in our official work im.

Re: Good Riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

Project Give up again
Project Giving up
Project Gave up
Project Given up
Project TTIWRLN (This Time it will really Last ... NOT)

Re: Good Riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

Great to know that hangout has never given you non IT problems.

It would be problematic if I fell down because I'm using the service or if it cause my Wife to dump me etc.

The other day my Windows 365 service cause me to lose the national lottery which is the last straw.

I missed the days where the worse technology services could only cause IT problems like going down every other hour or random unhelpful technical error messages.

Re:Good Riddance

[Shatrat]

Google uses Hangouts for their own internal communication, to the point of avoiding using actual phone calls or email which makes them a pain in the ass to deal with if you're not a googler. Maybe they're deprecating the API but not the product itself?

Re: Good Riddance

[master_kaos]

Project RICKROLL (Never Gonna Give You Up, Never Gonna Let You Down)

Re:Good Riddance

[drizuid]

Hangouts should've been renamed to Hangups. Connection issues were so rampant, and was one of the primary reasons Google Helpouts failed so badly.

I disagree. I used hangouts to call my wife and kids frequently from Afghanistan over a 2Mbps satellite connection and never experienced a hangup. in fact, the voice and video quality was FAR superior to any other voice/video offering on the market. It worked for me in 2007-8 and 2011-12 without a hitch. I have also leveraged it for years in my asterisk pbx without issues on hours long conference calls. that being said, hangouts itself is not being retired (thankfully), the API is.

"hazards of developing using a third party"

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the hazards of relying on Google for anything. They throw stuff away constantly.

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[thegarbz]

No for the most part they throw away unpopular things off little interest. Chances are if you're using this API you can manage the complaints you get from both of your customers.

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[Anonymous Coward]

Then there was Google Reader...

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[msauve]

Google: "Oh, look - shiny!"

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[Big Hairy Ian]

And then there's google site search which only about 25% of the inter-web uses. That get decommissioned later this year but at least they gave us advanced warning and also they are replacing it. It's just that it's scheduled to be removed before the replacement comes online.

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[Anonymous Coward]

iGoogle.

Google Code.

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[bluefoxlucid]

The negative attitude directed at tossing out something approximately nobody used is predictable, since it's super-bitch Barbara Hudson. Her Facebook is basically "EVERYONE IS ASSHOLES LOOK HOW FUCKING ASSHOLES EVERYONE IS" and "I FOUND PUPPIES I'M SO GOOD SOME ASSHOLES DIDN'T RESCUE THESE PUPPIES BEFORE ME SO I HAVE TO RESCUE THEM BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE ARE ASSHOLES AND I'M AN ANGEL!!!!!!!111" Her M.O. is essentially "you're wrong and an asshole," no matter who you are.

Not many people can claim to be that much of a cunt.

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[shaitand]

Google sometimes lacks perspective on what constitutes "unpopular", there is a pretty wide margin between genuinely unpopular and unpopular relative to Google's most widely used applications. Some google solutions are applicable to a wide audience and some hit a niche but are still quite popular like google voice. Those smaller single niche purpose tools might not be nearly as popular but having them available those times you need them is a big part of Google's value.

I think Google is missing the point here, Duo (which I'm hearing about for the first time now) is only a video app... video is a great buzz feature but outside of a few special situations where you are far apart from someone important you generally want good old text communication. Hangouts provides that without need to facebook interact, actually keeps a nice searchable history, works from your email client which is perfectly appropriate for work unlike social media and also works on your phone.

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[thegarbz]

Google sometimes lacks perspective on what constitutes "unpopular"

Perspective is something for people who are making assumptions. Google doesn't need perspective, they have analytics.

there is a pretty wide margin between genuinely unpopular

The No True Scotsman fallacy is worse when you're actually Scottish as you have even more of a preconceived bias. Take a survey of Slashdot and you're likely to get widely different results compared to taking a survey somewhere else. Analytics is what breaks through those biases. e.g. Based on what goes on here Facebook is incredibly unpopular, no one uses it and it has zero influence on the world. However we know through actual data that the opposite is true. I'll side with what Google views as "genuinely" popular / unpopular.

You mentioned it yourself, niche. Google has dropped many niche things that never made it to prime and general purpose. That has been their modus operandi since we first got reports of those software engineer having a free day to tinker with whatever they want. Dropping a niche product does not have a wide impact on both customers or indeed developers who are adopting an API which is the subject we're addressing. If a developer is pouring heart and sole into an API for a niche and barely used product then chances are they are going to fail with or without Google's help.

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[shaitand]

"Perspective is something for people who are making assumptions. Google doesn't need perspective, they have analytics."

Analytics have to be interpreted... through a lens of perspective. I was looking at a cpu usage graph today... someone pointed out a huge spike and asked for an explanation... the graph scaled automatically so the massive spike was only a 5% usage increase on a system that was mostly idle and created the illusion of a massive spike because a measly 5% was massive relative to the variance over the rest of the period in the graph. Even a graph can have perspective.

Google's perspective could lead to cutting something that costs them next to nothing to maintain and has hundreds of thousands or even millions of users because that is peanuts compared to gmail... their "graph" has scaled in the opposite direction making such usage look like a tiny blip.

Analytics are a bunch of data, you can spin them, twist them, and interpret/misinterpret them in so many ways they are very nearly useless. I leave pretending nearly meaningless correlations are extremely valuable hard data to poor bastards who have to convince the non-technical idiot decision makers and advertising con men.

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[thegarbz]

Analytics have to be interpreted... through a lens of perspective.

If only we knew of a company that was good at dealing with large amounts of data and searching through it, an expert who specialises in bringing together large data sets and extracting meaningful data from them.

I'm going to quote myself for prosperity:

I'll side with what Google views as "genuinely" popular / unpopular.

Re:"hazards of developing using a third party"

[Anonymous Coward]

One company who is worse at this is Apple.

Re: "hazards of developing using a third party"

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha. Nice. I never checked her Facebook, but that's the sentiment from Slashdot.

It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anrego]

These days it's hard to write anything non-trivial without relying on something that will be hard to replace if it goes away, that's just a reality of modern software design. You can minimize the risk with abstraction and try to rely on open standards with multiple implementations, but at some point you have to just accept the occasional puzzle piece change as part of the business and move on.

That said, google pulls this shit all the time. Using a google API or service for anything critical would imo be a huge risk given their long history of suddenly killing things.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Dutch Gun]

While I don't expect Google to realistically support every failed project forever, every product or service they kill reinforces the notion that "the cloud" simply means "services you rent which can be arbitrarily shut down at any time by the company who actually owns them."

There's nothing wrong with cloud-based services, as long as you go in with your eyes wide open to both the upsides AND the downsides. And be extra wary if you're not paying for a service and don't see an obvious revenue model.

Re: It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why you pick the biggest and best, and then keep up to date on it.

If you're going cloud right you, you go with Amazon, and only Microsoft if you're all .NET. All the others are not worth the risk.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anrego]

There's nothing wrong with cloud-based services, as long as you go in with your eyes wide open to both the upsides AND the downsides.

Agree entirely. It's a risk and business management decision as much as a technical one. Relying on 3rd party services is obviously (or hopefully obviously) a risk, but risk is a basic component of most business.

Re: It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going cloud right you, you go with Amazon, and only Microsoft if you're all .NET

Real developers are going cloud with Mirai. Your code deploys to 100,000+ geodiverse nodes, and their cloud is only guaranteed to get bigger!

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not really true for software and services companies pay serious money for, such as Oracle (for database), Microsoft (for Office) or Atlassian (for web collaboration software).

One of the problems with open source and Web 2.0 is that providers take the attitude, hey, you got it for free. You should thank us for the use you were able to get out of it. And anyway, check out our new stuff... you might like it even better.

And that's why the aforesaid vendors of proprietary software continue to do well.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anrego]

I've been involved in refactoring lots of software to replace dependencies on dead or obsolete tools and libraries, some of which were very expensive. Open source projects stagnate and die, but businesses go bankrupt, shift directions and discontinue products if they become unprofitable.

Determining the stability of a product and the impact to your business if it goes away is (or should be) part of the business decision process.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[the_Bionic_lemming]

These days it's hard to write anything non-trivial without relying on something that will be hard to replace if it goes away, that's just a reality of modern software design.

Umm, no, it isn't.

Learn how to write a web page without using api from other sources. Don't use javascipt links.

WRITE YOUR OWN CODE!

It's pure lazy to use 3rd party links. If you can't code without the crutches, then at least admit you're handicapped.

Re: It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anonymous Coward]

The cloud is the deathknell of everything a personal computer used to stand for. We used to have our own files and programs, we were the masters. Now we're merely the tenants, paying rent every so often, our devices and apps beleaguered by ads and other bullshit.

RMS had it correct, but idk if he predicted our trojan horses wouldn't exactly come from the Microsofts of the world initially... but from hardware makers concocting a new type of computer (smartphone) which in turn inflicted the rest of the market with this shit mentality.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming in the realm of "non-trivial", and presuming e-commerce you're probably going to be using some kind of payment processor and possibly payment service provider, not to mention some kind of database.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[im_thatoneguy]

And be extra wary if you're not paying for a service and don't see an obvious revenue model.

I don't see many people developing, deploying and maintaining a video chat service for less than the occasional hassle of changing providers who use a sane API. Integration should be incredibly simple and inexpensive. You could have many dozen Google Hangout type services shutter and still save time and money over developing it and hosting it in-house.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Bert64]

If you're willing to pay big money for something, then you should be able to afford to continue maintaining an open source stack even if the original author has lost interest...
Just because something is expensive doesn't mean the vendor will keep maintaining it.. Many big vendors have dropped products over the years, or moved their customers to new versions with various disadvantages etc. If the code runs on your own hardware then you can keep running old versions, but it will become increasingly problematic and insecure.

On the other hand, if it's a proprietary service offered by someone else you are entirely beholden to that supplier to continue running the service and shouldn't become dependant on it.

Re: It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called progress. Embrace it. "Personal computers" are dead.

Re: It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what Hitler said when he build the concentration camps (except for the "personal computer" part).
Adolf, is that you?

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[hughbar]

I agree, but (as someone who is pretty radical) one can (should?) make it a design objective to minimise this kind of danger. That's a good reason for choosing open source projects that have good community, high and recent levels of activity for example, even if not technically the best thing. Standing on the shoulders of healthy giants and/or helping them become healthy.

The rest is more difficult, that is persuading non-technical or less-technical folks that open API is not open source. Especially when disingenuous firms try to blur the distinction every single day. This is part of what I call 'open season', it's a relation of giving young people (usually males) pizza and beer then co-opting their ideas because it's a hackathon.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[thegarbz]

Most of the stuff Google kill are at the point of obscurity anyway. If you were building you business on such an API you've failed already even if it doesn't get killed.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[drolli]

Or if you are actually the customer. (lik google docs, office 356 etc.)

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anne Thwacks]

You design your code so you can switch between payment providers at a moment's notice (to avoid risk of rates becoming uncompetitive, or other unreasonable conditions).

And you use an OSS database to avoid Oracle^H^H^H^H^H being shafted/crushed/hung-drawn-and-quartered. If they get borked, at least they can always be forked - and others will be in the same boat.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[NotAPK]

Databases are piss-easy these days. Any competent programmer can code up a custom web site with DB support, forms, basic customer-service tools, as well as helpful information for the visitors, in about 5 days (max). That's with no 3rd party libraries.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[TheRaven64]

The important question to ask is how much will it harm the third party if you go out of business. For pretty much anyone using Google services, the answer is 'not at all'.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anrego]

write a web page

I said non-trivial. Most web pages are pretty trivial.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been involved in refactoring lots of software to replace dependencies on dead or obsolete tools and libraries, some of which were very expensive. Open source projects stagnate and die, but businesses go bankrupt, shift directions and discontinue products if they become unprofitable.

Determining the stability of a product and the impact to your business if it goes away is (or should be) part of the business decision process.

Completely agreed.

However there is a difference between using a open source project and using a third party API.

If the open source project is abandoned, you have the option of sponsoring it or picking it up and continuing it for yourself if you feel it's that useful. But even if not, the worst case scenario generally still leaves you with working code, so you can manage the transition to a new product at whatever pace you need to.

If you're relying on an API that gets abandoned, you are generally given a fixed deadline before it will be switched off. You don't get the option to take it over for yourself, so your only option is to find a replacement, sometimes at quite short notice. That's why people get wound up about Google doing this kind of thing all the time; it puts the people using the API on the back foot immediately, and doesn't give them many options.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Junta]

Well, it really depends on *what* you are doing.

The reality is that pulling in dependencies has gotten perhaps *too* easy to the point of depending on external service or software in such a way that the rug could be yanked out from under you in a way that could have been easily avoided.

It's not really *that* new, but people are quick to look for depedencies that really aren't needed. They hear some protocol or some RFC and immediately jump to searching for a library, when if they read the protocol or RFC they would realize it's a trivial little thing that could be handled with a little function. I know there's a real risk of reinventing the wheel here and there's a healthy balance to be struck. It's not good to be so desperate that you'll start using some completely unknown highly dubious dependency because it's all you can find when you could roll your own.

What is relatively new: it's now utterly trivial to point your end-user to get dependencies from online, pypi, gems, npm, ppa, or (rarely) copr. Of course the owner of that dependency could have any unknown philosophy for maintaining and testing, and can push broken updates, incompatible updates, or change their mind and take their ball and go home for whatever reason (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/). In my mind, it's a good venue for projects to deliver to peer developers and to users (in the case of ppa or copr when you reference *no* other ppa or copr content) but as soon as a developer is referencing other developer content to their users, it's a recipe for disaster.

Of course these services are a whole new mess, since they *cannot* avoid the distribution mistake referenced above.

Re:It happens, but way too commonly with google

[coofercat]

...and in fairness to them, they launched the API in 2011 (https://techcrunch.com/2011/09/20/google-launches-hangouts-api-for-developers/) - so they've given it about 6 years. There aren't many assets you can rely on for 6 years without having to do some sort of rewrite/patchup or whatever.

I think the real issue here is for people who've only just decided to integrate with it. They've just spent however much time/money engineering it in, and now they've only got until April (a proper bummer if you just implemented in the last couple of months).

If there's any real criticism to be leveled at Google here then, it's to give people a lot more notice of taking things down. I'd say giving people a year of 'EOL' time during which they'll accept no new entrants, but continue to support the old ones would demonstrate some good citizenship. That would put their costs up a bit, but I doubt by much and it'd more or less debunk the reputation they're getting of pulling services people that rely on too easily. Until they start to commit to doing something like this though, integrate with Google at your own risk.

Re: It happens, but way too commonly with google

[dnaumov]

Turns out most people out there DO NOT WANT a "personal computer" in the way you and I understand it. They consider it too much trouble and effort.

Re: It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Sperbels]

Just because the market is flooded with billions of pocket sized "personal computers" that nobody ever does anything interesting with, doesn't mean the core personal computer scene died. It just looks small compared to the legions of pocket computers.

Re: It happens, but way too commonly with google

[Dutch Gun]

It's called progress. Embrace it. "Personal computers" are dead.

We should start calling them "workstations" again, as I think that much better reflects their actual purpose these days. The new "personal computer" is a smartphone.

Really?

[kwerle]

I used to love hangouts. We used 'em at work (instead of whatever MS was pushing or webex or whatever that other 3rd party remote chat program was).

Work eventually got zoom, which works pretty well, and we finally bailed on hangouts. But it always seemed like a solid cross platform solution to me...

Re:Really?

[Sperbels]

Agreed. Been using it nearly everyday since 2011 on my work computer, home computer, tablet, home laptop, and phone. I usually have no issues with it.

Google shithole

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former Google employee, I can only laugh at this.

Throw one more on the pile. There's literally thousands more where it came from.

That company is absolutely infested with self-important assholes who all think they're the next big SV hot shit. Nobody wants to maintain anything and no documentation is kept up, because the brilliant geniuses hired out of college to make it all moved up or out three months later after shitting their half-assed garbage out in a flurry of sick buzzwords so impressive that nobody wanted to admit they didn't know what the fuck was being said.

Re:Google shithole

[Anonymous Coward]

So true. We've tried to work with google on 2 separate projects. Each time every engineer that has had to work with them has said how full of themselves every single one of them has been. There is no compromise, and god forbid you ever bring up an issue or something could be an issue in the future. Everything from them is the way something should be done, and you are doing it wrong and must conform. Even though they will be scrapping what you just tried to interface with because it was so horribly designed and unmaintainable by some 'rockstar' google coder that the project couldn't continue and will just be scrapped for another haphazard api later

Re:Google shithole

[Anonymous Coward]

After working with many of their APIs, I have to agree. I call them an 80% company. The people there get excited about doing something, do the 80% easy part, then bail out on handling the edge cases and making it robust and actually a functioning product. So on the surface, what you are looking sounds like just what you want, and even getting the happy path might be fine, but it isn't too far down the road before you find functions missing definitions, or even giant use cases completely neglected.

Re:Google shithole

[Howitzer86]

What, do the treat their work projects like personal projects?

Re:Google shithole

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually couldn't even get through the recruiter speak when they started talking to me. I declined the interview because I just couldn't stand the hubris.

Re:Google shithole

[Junta]

Well, it's not just google. That attitude is infecting a lot of the industry. Business leaders have figured out that short term prospects can be very good based on the '80%', and by the time the jig is up, they've moved on to another fly by night project exploiting that short term benefit.

This is not the first time, the dot com bubble was also built largely on this sort of behavior. Companies that prioritize ability to provide long term support take a backseat to the new blood that has nothing to lose and churn out very impressive, impossible to support concepts.

Of course another reality is that all this stuff is extremely important for building an ecosystem of independent parties to collaborate, but the bread and butter of Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others is a monolithic web application. Changing the rug out from under yourself when you have close business and personal relationships in your team can be the most effective way forward in that scenario. Then they carry over their internal sensibilities into the outside world and things are less than happy, but it's hard to ignore the brand strength and how impressive the short term offering can be sometimes.

Re:Google shithole

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if it is still the case, but Google employees had 20% time where they could work on whatever they wanted (subject to their manager's approval), so projects done in their 20% time are somewhat like personal projects to them.

Re:Google shithole

[Anonymous Coward]

After working with many of their APIs, I have to agree. I call them an 80% company.

They're allowed to spend 20 percent of their time on neat side projects, so obviously they're experts at applying Pareto's 80-20 rule.

life sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

the fact that i've been expeeriencing with all those startups doing job applications to lure programmers to develop pieces of analized projects and compile everything and give the software to clients then wipe everything and go mine another stupid people, not mentioning another fact that those guys are at the my top list of groups of interest that I suspect of blocking me to have a job as a programmer because they want to harvast my talent and put me as some sort of office clown, MAKES me have NO empathy at all with any google employee. also the fact that google supports tor sites so and the government makes nothing to stop those suckers. meh. life sucks. oh, and if it's that skinny germanic jewish retard who is parked by my house stealing my wifi signal to watch child porn, go find another gogoboy to buy cocaine for you and/or piss on your mouth.

Re: What are we talking about, again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail was in beta for five years.

Little did you all know

[SuperKendall]

Google lets engineers devote 20% of time to side projects.... but makes sure it allocates no more than 10% of time to its own.

I use hangouts for chat between phone and PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Now what am I supposed to use?

Re: I use hangouts for chat between phone and PC

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't shutting down Hangouts moron. They're shutting down the API for 3rd parties that leverage it. If you use the Hangouts app on your phone you're fine.

Re: I use hangouts for chat between phone and PC

[Anne Thwacks]

If you use the Hangouts app on your phone you're deranged.

FTFY

Re: I use hangouts for chat between phone and PC

[mrmaster]

So..what is this great and glorious and all powerful IM/phone program that I am supposed to use? Please make sure that I can get my messages on all my devices, make calls to POTS lines, have the program already installed on many people's devices and integrates sms and im into the same program.

Re: I use hangouts for chat between phone and PC

[Sperbels]

They aren't shutting down Hangouts. They're shutting down the API for 3rd parties that leverage it. If you use the Hangouts app on your phone you're fine.

Isn't that better? Excluding one word in your reply could have made you 100% less of a dick.

Re: I use hangouts for chat between phone and PC

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Moran, after my father. How did you guess my name? Anywho, thank you, I readily admit that I am quite stupid so this new information helps quite a bit.

Once again

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Once again Google fucks people over, people who've spent a lot of time and energy building shit to work with their system.

The motto of this story is, "Work with Google and you'll get abandoned whenever they feel like it."

Re:Once again

[wvmarle]

Considering how "insignificant" Hangouts has become, it appears that most developers already abandoned the service.

Re:Once again

[thegarbz]

Or maybe Google is closing something that is used so little that most developers who have put time and effort into it have written it off as a failure long ago.

Re:Once again

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't get what's going on with Google's management. For years now, their left hand has just been straight up shitting on their right hand. They try to urge developers to write apps using nothing but their APIs, while continually dropping APIs unexpectedly. They push for unlimited bandwidth while offering a pay-for-what-you-use mobile service.

Re: Once again

[Anonymous Coward]

Their mobile service is an MVNO, they don't have their own network and they have to pay for the bandwidth. This is obvious.

Re:Once again

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly did you build that you are now fucked-over on, or are you just talking out of your ass?

Re:Once again

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Considering how "insignificant" Hangouts has become, it appears that most developers already abandoned the service.

If you think this is just about Hangouts, you haven't been paying attention.

Re:Once again

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Or maybe Google is closing something that is used so little that most developers who have put time and effort into it have written it off as a failure long ago.

Or maybe you're missing the point, which is that Google will drop you like a used condom as soon as they decide your unpaid work on their latest shiny bag of hipster hype isn't making them enough money.

Re:Once again

[thegarbz]

your unpaid work

Who's unpaid work? Surely not the developers who are creating platforms using the APIs. Which ultimately die due to lack of users. But hey let's keep it open. I'm sure the developers will be just as happy with an abandoned API in a wasteland of no users as they would with a closed one, but let's all jump on the crap on Google bandwagon because we can right?!

Re:Once again

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Who's unpaid work? Surely not the developers who are creating platforms using the APIs.

No, I'm referring to all the people who don't work for the Almighty Google, who code stuff up using Google's APIs, trying to build something interesting. Which is why they released the fucking API in the first place- so people could build stuff that uses it and (hopefully) make it popular.

Re:Once again

[thegarbz]

So as i was implying:

a) this isn't unpaid work.
b) closing the API is completely irrelevant when there are no users using it. The "unpaid developers" don't care at this point.

Re:Once again

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

So as i was implying:

a) this isn't unpaid work.
b) closing the API is completely irrelevant when there are no users using it. The "unpaid developers" don't care at this point.

a) No, it's unpaid work. I'm sorry if you're having difficulty understanding that idea. Google doesn't pay them, no one pays them, it's unpaid work.

b) There are people using it, just not in the numbers that Google would like to see. Or are you claiming that there is literally not a single person, not one, using Google Hangouts?

c) Furthermore, my original comment was about Google's services in general, not just Hangouts.

Re:Once again

[thegarbz]

a) No, it's unpaid work. I'm sorry if you're having difficulty understanding that idea. Google doesn't pay them, no one pays them, it's unpaid work.

a) Because google doesn't pay them doesn't mean it's unpaid. Do you expect Microsoft to cut you a check everytime you write a Win32 App?

b) There are few people using it. The entire service is a wasteland, a failed product. Thanks for claiming everything needs to be absolute. I guess the one person still running a PDP-11 in a museum should be grounds for DEC to keep supporting it for ever right?

c) Your original comment applies to most of the bitching that goes on about Google closing services. There's only a tiny handful that were closed with an active user base (e.g. Reader).

Re:Once again

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Because google doesn't pay them doesn't mean it's unpaid.

No, what makes it "unpaid" is that nobody pays them. That's kind of the definition.

-

Do you expect Microsoft to cut you a check everytime you write a Win32 App?

No, and if no one paid me to write that app, that would mean the work I did was "unpaid".

-

There are few people using it. The entire service is a wasteland, a failed product. Thanks for claiming everything needs to be absolute.

Oh please, I never claimed any such thing- you were the one that said, and I quote, "...when there are no users using it". But it's nice to see that you admit there were people who were using it (even though you have no idea how many).

If It's Important

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you need to roll your own. Too often these days we deal in throwaway software with wet behind the ears young hotshot coders calling us stupid or old school for not jumping on the latest whiz bang cloud nonsense. Then they pull your API. Did somebody try to say, "I told you so"? Yeah, we greybeards will take some respect now.

Too many parents started showing up

[Anonymous Coward]

Then it was ovah.

Roll 20

[Grimpen]

How will this effect Roll20? That's what I used Hangouts for mostly, much better than the Roll20 native chat. Hangouts was always a decent cross platform video chat.

Re:Roll 20

[Anonymous Coward]

https://psg.i.lithium.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/129893i33EB5D986B37605D/image-size/original

Re:Roll 20

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Discord or Skype?

Bloatware

[Anonymous Coward]

It's part of the bloatware T-mobile shat upon my phone. It will be interesting to see if I can remove it after April without rooting the phone. Any bets?

Re:Bloatware

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure it's not T-Mobile pre-loading Hangouts on the phone, I think that's one of the apps Google themselves require manufactures to pre-install

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

what is google duo?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Some bloatware which is pushed into your phone on any day soon. Every single Google application is nowadays a system component which can not be removed, even though nobody actually uses them. Perhaps some day business management will learn, that force has never gained them any happy customers. Google is quickly gaining same kind of hatred among people as Microsoft did on its peak.

Why do they keep doing this?

[bistromath007]

Google's development strategy:

10 Get everybody using a new thing
20 Get it working well enough that they're finally used to it
30 GOTO 10

Just fix the shit you already made. You do not need two or three parallel solutions for every service you want to attempt to provide.

Re:Why do they keep doing this?

[slyborg]

Why is this still complex for people after 15+ years? Google's business is selling ads to an audience made captive by "free" email and search (I include Maps here) paid for by the privacy of that audience. The rest of what they do is wanking because they have more money than they know what to do with, the incremental info they get from most of these projects is nil. Google "strategy" these days is to make an inferior copy of other people's ideas, try to leverage their captive audience by strong-arming them and then failing anyway. People have been ripping on Apple lately, but Google is in exactly the same "no-innovation" spiral. They are ripe for disruption, it is only a matter of time.

Re:Why do they keep doing this?

[hyades1]

Wish I had some mod points right now. Your comment deserves a wide audience.

Re:Why do they keep doing this?

[thegarbz]

Most of these programs segfault at 10.

Re: Why do they keep doing this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you rely on google APIs, you certainly do need a parallel solution.

Re:Why do they keep doing this?

[swb]

It's so funny how companies like Google or Microsoft or even Apple never seem to get really good at anything beyond what they're good at.

Apple managed to reinvent itself from computer company to mostly a smartphone maker, Google managed to do search/advertising and Android, and Microsoft managed Windows/Office/SQL but at the end of the day they just can't overcome the internal inertia of these products and become more than that.

Microsoft at least has the path to Azure, but it's really the same products sold as timesharing. Google throws money at everything, but even where things seem to sort of stick (ChromeOS) they never gain real traction.

Re:Why do they keep doing this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly not "everybody" is using the Hangouts API. Probably not enough people at all to make their time worth supporting it.

Re:Why do they keep doing this?

[Anonymous Coward]

To me this is more or less proof that Google is evil, despite what their motto used to be.
If a company isn't evil, and it is flush with money to the point it's breaking at the seams, and it lacks the capability (opportunity, competence, ...) to expand, then it should keep doing what does and increase employee pay, donate to charities, and so on.

Re:Why do they keep doing this?

[Anonymous Coward]

People have been ripping on Apple lately, but Google is in exactly the same "no-innovation" spiral. They are ripe for disruption, it is only a matter of time.

Yeah. They should be innovative like Microsoft is. I mean I love Ribbons, and auto-installed-patches-bulk-patches, and regular phone-home spyware integrated into my OS for a seamless user experience, and always-on advertising, and a mobile-phone-designed interface on a desktop computer. Oh, I think I used the wrong verb in the last sentence.

Far too often, no-innovation is the best thing a company can do. Too bad nobody gets rewarded for "not breaking" things.

Decent cross platform video chat?

[SuperKendall]

I had to use Hangouts one year for a group chat with people on a team in different countries. Hangouts was so terrible by the end we had all switched to audio only... so we were really doing a conference call. Where the audio quality sucked. It was free though, I'll give it props for that.

Re: Decent cross platform video chat?

[NotAPK]

But for family get togethers they are perfect. My family tried most video conferencing programs and eventually settled on Hangouts as the easiest for the oldies to handle. Google screwed us with the new G+ interface last year, as they dropped (or hid it so well none of us could find it) the Hangouts tools and we had to migrate everyone to hangouts.google.com to get going again.

Anyone able to suggest an alternative?

We need it to be cross platform, as we have a dozen family members on 3 continents using different systems, and "good enough" for us to see the babies, tell some jokes, and just catch up. Suggestions more than welcome!

Re: Decent cross platform video chat?

[Khyber]

As long as you're not running Linux, Camfrog Video Chat or Skype works just fine and at least neither of those are going away any time soon unlike Hangouts.

Re: Decent cross platform video chat?

[NotAPK]

Cam Frog looks bloody awful. I can tell from their tiered service plans, which I can't even copy/paste here since their website is horrendously broken.

Sorry, a few of us use Linux, so it's a no-go anyway...

Re: Decent cross platform video chat?

[Khyber]

Camfrog USED to be good. Used to be you could buy a lifetime pro code.

But as far as multi-user video chat goes, nothing beats Camfrog. It's so good PalTalk bought the rights to use their software.

Re: Decent cross platform video chat?

[Khyber]

Oh, and to boot, you don't HAVE to pay. If you're doing family stuff where it's two families, each in their own room, the free single-user view side works just fine. Even under Linux + Wine.

Re: Decent cross platform video chat?

[NotAPK]

Cheers, I'll take a second look. Unfortunately we have multiple people across lots of varied platforms, which is what drew us to Hangouts in the first place.

I realise that Hangouts is still here, it's just the API that's being discontinued. But as others have pointed out, it probably means the site is going to be canned at some point in the near future.

Duo or Allo? And where is text chat?

[short]

Duo is just a video chat, isn't it? How to do a text chat with as with XMPP (=Hangouts)? Google has Allo for a text chat (based on QUIC protocol) but is there a documentation for the Allo protocol itself? Or even a Free client for it - such as for desktop Linux?

Re:Duo or Allo? And where is text chat?

[Luthair]

XMPP was GChat which they killed for Hangouts. I don't know anyone bothering with Duo or Allo, I presume the only reason they made them was because the cool kids at WhatsApp used a phone number based system instead of email and were successful.

Re:Duo or Allo? And where is text chat?

[short]

Hangouts is still XMPP. I use it daily against Pidgin XMPP. Allo and all other proprietary IMs use UDP-based communication. XMPP uses TCP. I have been using XMPP-TCP for years fine but then I used it once abroad on a 3G/LTE network with all its temporary drops and Hangouts/XMPP became unusable, it even got stuck for whole night. Maybe Google has some bug in Hangouts as even TCP with keepalives should timeout in at most several minutes - although that would still be unusable in practice - this is why UDP is used by the commercially successful IM protocols.

Re:What are we talking about, again?

[Anonymous Coward]

"when Linux discontinues beta features, people praise them and call it progress"
That makes no sense at all.

Down with big business... lingo

[JaredOfEuropa]

"Going forward"? What's wrong with "from now on", or "soon", or simply leaving that little bit off completely since it conveys zero information? I know business people like the term "going forward" because it sounds both positive and purposeful, but it's such an ugly turn of phrase when tacked on to the end of a statement like that.

Re:Down with big business... lingo

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a more sophisticated "er" or "um". That said, it should be destroyed.

Re:Down with big business... lingo

[RyoShin]

"Going/moving forward" is not the same as "soon", it means "starting immediately* and continuing until informed otherwise".

I normally try to avoid jargon that spawns from Management, but I find "going forward" to be softer/indirect language than "from now on" which I take to be more authoritative/direct. If I managed people I would use "from now on" in conversations with them when I want to firmly set/change something, but when communicating with other people (particularly external contacts) and I want them to start doing something I use "Going forward, please blah blah blah", a half request/half command.

Despite all that, in the context of the sentence in the summary I agree it's misused. The meaning of the sentence doesn't change without the phrase, and it would be more useful to have an "effective immediately" or "effective $DATE" for clarity.

* even if it doesn't apply to an immediate task or project

Things are going backwards

[lucasnate1]

In the past we used to have an open standard for messaging that was supported by mainstream messengers, it was called Jabber. In the past we had universal messengers that worked with all services. Now it seems like everybody insists on rolling his own (snapchat, tinder, facebook, google, kik, whatever).

Re:Things are going backwards

[fbobraga]

It's very sad...

Something about repeating history, poorly

[Anonymous Coward]

The rise of the PC had a lot to do with gaining independence from mainframe operators. That's why it's called Personal Computer. At the end of the PC age, what do we get (again)? Companies keeping programs on their systems, for us to use only at their whim. Companies deciding which apps can be distributed through their app stores, based on their sole discretion. But it's all soooo convenient, isn't it?

Re:Something about repeating history, poorly

[Anonymous Coward]

and then you have the linux folks...

Why Google Hangouts didn't get used

[Applehu Akbar]

Because everyone knows that any Google side project is subject to being suddenly abandoned with minimal notice.

Google has too many apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Hangouts, Allo, Duo, Messenger, and that's not even all of them. Stop building new apps, and add feature/fix one existing app.

Re:Google has too many apps

[Tokolosh]

And Google Voice. Google is a hot mess of disjointed, half-assed messaging/voice/video apps.

Re:What are we talking about, again?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Linux discontinues beta features, people praise them and call it progress. Go figure...

Nice wording for `bug-fixing' :o) And it is progress indeed.

Bait and switch

[jabberw0k]

Marketing: "Computers" are scary, let's call this computer a "telephone" (a device that only handles voice) and deceive folks into trusting our treacherous spy machines and paying us handsomely each month for the privilege.

Moron Consumers: "Ooh, shiny!"

wtf google

[wardrich86]

Why the hell are they pushing a feature-limited One-on-one app over Hangouts? Why couldn't they have just implemented the features of Duo into Hangouts to allow for higher-quality video chats during one-on-one calls?

Re:wtf google

[fred6666]

What feature of Duo are you missing in Hangouts? Hangouts seems superior in every way.

Re:wtf google

[wardrich86]

I've never actually used Duo, but I've heard the video quality is apparently better. But it may also be the fact that there is less packets being spammed around considering conversation is only between two participants, and there is less going on with Duo.

Re:wtf google

[fred6666]

I wouldn't be surprised if Duo and Hangouts used the exact same encoder and had the same quality.

Re:wtf google

[sanf780]

How about: wtf, a mobile only application? I really like the idea of typing text messages in my browser of choice. Anyhow, it looks like Hangouts will still be there, it is just the APIs that third parties use that will be gone.

Re:wtf google

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why couldn't they have just implemented the features of Duo into Hangouts...

Hangouts is a resident of the salted fields that are what's remains of Vivek "Vic" Gundotra's catastrophic push into Social Networking.

A cynic might think that Gundotra's primary purpose was to seriously damage Google's esprit de corps and reputation, with the secondary purpose of destroying interoperable Instant Messaging and driving us back to the Bad Old Days of the mid-1990s with AIM, ICQ, YIM, and the whole host of walled gardens.

Re:wtf google

[wardrich86]

So why the fuck did they decide to fragment it?! Fuck off, Google! They replace 1 solid app with a good userbase for 2 "okay" applications that do the same (but less) as the current popular app and 0 userbase.

Re:wtf google

[Wormsign]

It looks to me like Google desperately wanted to compete with Facetime, so they made Duo where you can video chat people just by their phone number and not require a Google Account. I can't see any other reason.

Re:wtf google

[fred6666]

It's a stupid reason. A Google account is much more convenient then a phone number. When you are on Android you need a Google account anyways. At least you can use your Google account on your PC.

Irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. Just as all of Google's current products will be in the future. The ly do search well (they used to do it better, before they got so greedy) with a product they purchased. They have nailed creepy ass advertising. Other than these, they haven't accomplished much of any great utility throughout their existence, stock prices and market caps be damned. Real world usage paints them as he charlatans they really are. Totally the Microsoft of this century.

So what's the alternative?

[sremick]

It'd be one thing if Hangouts had been replaced by something that had feature parity, but Duo is something else entirely and is not a replacement. For example, in my circles of family and friends, Hangouts is used almost exclusively and we split our use about 50/50 between desktop (browser) and mobile. We depend on seamless migration of chats synchronized between devices. Last I knew, Duo was tied to your phone # and so didn't allow multiple device access and had no desktop component. Has that changed?

Re:So what's the alternative?

[fred6666]

This.
This is what people don't understand with all these "messaging" solutions. Being able to reply from a PC is important. Why would I reply on a shitty smartphone when I sit in front of a PC with a real keyboard for hours every day?

Re:So what's the alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that Hangouts is fucking awful on the PC. While the mobile app is mostly fine (though could be better), it almost deserves to get killed off for its awful desktop version.

Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Until this moment, I had never heard of Google Duo. (I know Duo as a web based two factor authentication system, developed by Mac Book toting hiptsers.)

But, I still don't care enough to even go and see what Google Duo might be.

Typical Google Shotgun Failure

[Chas]

Google's real good at churn and burn.

But they absolutely SUCK at refining products unless they're an immediate hit.

Look at GMail and all the work that's been lavished on that.

Now look at something like Hangouts. It never really caught on, mostly because other community options were VASTLY more mature and dependable.
So, did Google work on it, to grow it and make it a better product?
Nope.
They basically tossed it out like a puppy that'd peed the rug.

Re:Typical Google Shotgun Failure

[TWX]

I think this is why Cisco Systems has taken a different approach. They invest in startups that look like they have promise and in the terms of their investment they retain right of first refusal to buy said startup. The upside is that new technology is forced to thrive under someone else's name before Cisco swings in and scoops it up, so if the project doesn't succeed there's no existing Cisco customer base to get upset. The downside is that when Cisco obtains said company, integrating the tech in with the rest of their products is usually clunky, they end up with too much overlap with other products, or poor integration.

And you people are still surprised?

[Yvan256]

The only things you can use from Google right now* are search, maps, ads.

* subject to change without notice.

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

"We understand this will impact developers who have invested in our platform. We have carefully considered this change and believe that [Alphabet would have purchased you by now if your business was important enough to support]."

I'm so surprised!

[Anonymous Coward]

.. cause this never happens!

- "We understand this will impact developers who have invested in our platform"
Of course it will.

Never trust Google to keep an API. It's all a POC for them. Go for a competitor, if there is one.

Google voice number?

[allencooke80]

Will I still be able to use my Google voice number?

Re:Google voice number?

[Wormsign]

Yes, this is just the Hangouts API. Hangouts itself is not going anywhere....yet

What I Want To Know Is:

[Anonymous Coward]

1). Is this a sign of larger "Web API" problems, or is this just a one-off service closure (I don't mean literally, just that we could treat this as a one-off);
2). Is Google particularly prone to discontinuing services, such that special concern is warranted? We already know that Google has killed off a lot of products so...

It was only 3-5 years ago I was hearing about the explosion of Web APIs and how great they were and it was a new land rush out there, leveraging external web services. Is this a sign that the trough of disillusionment is setting in (re: Gartner)? And is the disillusionment a sign of a fatal flaw in the whole Web API model, or is it just a realization of external risks, previously brushed off as unimportant?

And to repeat, is this maybe a special concern because of Google's behaviour in particular? Are other companies more reliable service providers (Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, PayPal, etc.)?