Slashdot Mirror
The Days of Google Talk Are Over (techcrunch.com)
The days of Google Talk are quickly coming to an end. An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch report: As the company announced today, the messaging service that allowed Gmail users to talk to each other since it launched in 2005, will now be completely retired. Even while Google pushed Hangouts as its consumer messaging service (before Allo, Duo, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet) over the last few years, it still allowed die-hard Gtalk users (and there are plenty of them) to stick to their preferred chat app. Over the next few days, these users will get an "invite" to move to Hangouts. After June 26, that switch will be mandatory.
So the chat tab within Gmail and the hangouts Android application remain, right? Only the windows Gtalk executable is being phased out?
Why would they tell those users to move to Hangouts, when they've already started telling hangouts users to move to Allo, Duo, and Messages?
Google seriously needs to stop this. The way to improve a product isn't to scrap it and build a new one every 6 months, but to upgrade the existing one. People get used to your existing product and want to keep using it. worse yet, people on your old product can't talk to people on your new product, and right now you have at least 3 generations of incompatible product in operation!
Damn title got me excited for a minute
The good news about this is, maybe it's a sign that they weren't really scanning everyone's phone calls including critical business strategy conference meetings.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
From what the email I received from Google says, chatting over XMPP using a client like Pidgin or Adium should continue to work after the GTalk stuff is shut down in Gmail:
The talk about federation is referring to using Google Apps on your own domain. They dropped federation years ago for gmail.com, but I never knew they had kept it for private domains.
Keeping XMPP support at least is fortunate because Hangouts still lacks basic features like buddy lists. No, I don't want my entire list of contacts to me my buddies for hangouts. And yes I do want to see who's actually logged in at the time. Seems like Google isn't really sure what hangouts is. Is it just glorified SMS messaging (IE not necessarily interactive), is it Google voice? Is it Google Chat?
Sadly, Google doesn't seem to care that much about end users. Though I guess it's not surprising since we really are the product, not the customer. Google has done some amazing things that provide incredible conveniences to us, but I'm getting really tired of all the ADD hipsters that seem to have taken over on their development teams. It's getting rather fatiguing to have Google screwing up all the services I actually used (Picasa, GTalk, Google Voice).
Google really is taking from Microsoft's playbook with the products getting worse and worse with each release and year.
Anyone know how to force the stupid "status bubble that only shows up on mouseover and doesn't even display the full URL unless you wait two seconds" into a normal always-there status bar with full URLs always shown instantly on mouseover, like all the other sane browsers?
#DeleteFacebook
So how does all this affect Project Fi? And the SMS and voice mail and calling support that's integrated in gmail and hangouts?
I am SO confused....
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
I thought it was dead for many years.
ICQ, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, Google Hangouts, Slack, Screenhero....for fuck's sake. Stop it.
Because Google suffers from the same CADT syndrome as your typical free software project: Let's call it the "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" model, or "CADT" for short. — Jamie Zawinski
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Sick of ads infecting/slowing/tracking you? Problem solved via APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/
Ads/script & malware rob speed/security/privacy
Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).
Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!
Avoids DNSChangers in routers/IP settings & dns redirects (99.999% of ISP DNS != patched vs. it) + lightens DNS load & resolves faster from local system RAM!
* Via what u NATIVELY have built into the IP stack in FASTER kernelmode!
APK
P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/
The few people I "chat" to in text modes have switched to Signal. As far as being secure goes its probably about the best thing around.
Sounds like it's high time to completely boycott all of these stupid services that google makes.
I swear, I have never in my life met a company with such unbelievably severe, systemic organizational ADD, such that they can't seem to keep any of their services in operation for more than a few years before they get bored and try to convince everyone to change to something else.
It's to the point where I'm honestly surprised that Google Maps is still available.
I'll post my comment before I post the text. Fuck you google not for abandoning another service, but for making me believe.
From here
https://developers.google.com/...
What is "service choice" and how does Google Talk enable it?
Service choice is something you have with email and, for the most part, with your regular phone service today. This means that regardless of whom you choose as your email service provider (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, your school or ISP, etc), you can email anyone who is using another service provider. The same applies to phone service. You can call someone even if they do not use the same phone company as you do. This allows you to choose your service provider based on other more important factors, such as features, quality of service, and price, while still being able to talk to anyone you want.
Unfortunately, the same is not true with many popular IM and VOIP networks today. If the people you want to talk to are all on different IM/VOIP services, you need to sign up for an account on each service and connect to each service to talk to them.
The Google Talk network supports open interoperability with hundreds of other communications service providers through a process known as federation. This means that a user on one service can communicate with users on another service without needing to sign up for, or sign in with, each service.
fuck google and fuck their shit products
Relevant xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/1361/
Google has recently started pushing the Google Voice app. I use it in conjunction with my cell phone. Perhaps they are simply consolidating voice/IM/Text functions under a single umbrella.
ordinary people don't care about the implications of their choice (of products or services). I still don't understand why XMPP has not been picked up by the vast majority. Now, we put our balls into the hands of greedy companies.