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

"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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

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

[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.

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.

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.

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: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.