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Google's Slack Competitor 'Hangouts Chat' Comes Out of Beta (techcrunch.com)
Frederic Lardinois reports via TechCrunch: Hangouts Chat, Google's take on modern workplace communication, is now generally available and is becoming a core part of G Suite. Hangouts Chat was first announced at Google Cloud Next 2017, together with Hangouts Meet. While Meet went right into public availability, though, Chat went into an invite-only preview. Now, Google is rolling Chat out to all G Suite users over the course of the next seven days (so if you don't see it yet, don't despair). For all intents and purposes, Hangouts Chat is Google's take on Slack, Microsoft Teams and similar projects. Since Google first announced this project, Atlassian also joined the fray with the launch of Stride. Like its competitors, Chat is available on iOS, Android and the web.
Chat currently supports 28 languages and each room can have up to 8,000 members. What's maybe just as important, though, is that Google has already built an ecosystem of partners that are integrating with Chat by offering their own bots. They include the likes of Xero, RingCentral, UberConference, Salesforce, Zenefits, Zoom.ai, Jira, Trello, Wrike and Kayak. There's even a Giphy bot. Developers can also build their own bots and integrate their own services with Chat.
Chat currently supports 28 languages and each room can have up to 8,000 members. What's maybe just as important, though, is that Google has already built an ecosystem of partners that are integrating with Chat by offering their own bots. They include the likes of Xero, RingCentral, UberConference, Salesforce, Zenefits, Zoom.ai, Jira, Trello, Wrike and Kayak. There's even a Giphy bot. Developers can also build their own bots and integrate their own services with Chat.
News!
I look forward to having this service cancel right after I start using it. So to help all Hangouts Chat users I won’t be using it.
fuck them and their 50 different chat programs that change every year. fuck them for abandoning open chat standards.
"Resistance is futile, you will be .... oh damn they allready cancelled it!"
Google chat is crap. Can't compare slack with it.
Google coming to the table with a competitor to Slack and HipChat is like Microsoft's Mobile Phone offering. Too little, too late.
We'll make great pets
That must mean they're ready to cancel it. /s
Do they use the same ransomware extortion business model as slack of locking up your messages after awhile and demanding you pay them to get your stuff back???
Yeah, because in this age of sexual harassment/hostile workplace/he-hurt-my-fefes claims being thrown at the drop of a hat, more informal communication between employees is EXACTLY what every company and agency is looking for.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Here's your news:
Ryver - Like slack, except they actually listen to their users.
Google's a day late and a dollar short, and we already know they don't listen to their users. GMail's still missing email functionality like "when email comes in to X address, reply using Y address" that was in apps like Eudora in the 1990's.
As long as Google's got your data, they consider themselves finished with a product. If they can't collect enough of your data, they'll let languish - or abandon - said product. Rinse and repeat.
I’m calling it - 27 months until Google discontinues Hangouts Chat.
Also, how many chat products does Google have now... twelve?
#DeleteChrome
Why does this exist and cost money when Discord and such already do this and more for free?
it only works if there's an even distribution of genders on a given channel.
And don't even think about getting >3 white males on there. It uninstalls Chrome from your machine.
I have Google Hangouts enabled for users in my Gsuite account services. I don't see anything like Hangouts Chat? I thought Hangouts was always about chat? WTF is Hangouts Meet? Is it the same as meet.google.com?
What the hell is going on here?
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Now you can enjoy Google 'chat' where your discussions are analyzed by their "AI", sold off when the price is right, and removed at their discretion! Very EXCITING!
--- OR ---
just call them a "fat niigger" whenever you want and not be a faggy chat nerd
hm decisions, decisions
... or is my company doing it wrong - or am I too old.
Use git for source control - setup login and fix configuration and permission issues to use git.
Use Jira for bug/feature tracking - setup login but IT has decided on different naming conventions - use two factor method different from everything else - fix configuration and permission issues.
Wait! Jira must be linked to git submissions. Cue new permission and configuration issues.
Don't forget to update project Wiki!
We use Agile! Or how to destroy communication that half-way competent people would do organically. Deadlines are tight people! We need "short" daily SUM's to make sure everybody is on the same page. Managers gotta manage...
And now Slack. And the inevitable phone text messages - hey I hit you up on Slack why haven't you responded yet? Sooo... must monitor Slack during work.
Easily half the day wasted on BS. Never a long enough uninterrupted time period to get "in the zone." Development in the social media era. Get off my lawn.
It's over.
NO ONE cares about your 'chat' applications. In any capacity.
You've utterly and completely screwed this up, over and over and over and over (and over!) again.
You didn't make an Android version of 'iMessage' which is all the Android people wanted.
You made fairly competent chat apps for the desktop (inside gmail) and promptly ruined them.
You renamed things, you merged things, you closed things, you had 2 or 3 chat systems running at once.
The entire messaging team should be ground up into pig feed. No one there has a fucking clear vision *AT ALL*
The messaging app should work on PC / Mac / Linux, in a browser and or with it's own app. It should also handle SMS, it should work on ALL Andriod phones as a built in chat tool too.
Utterly appallingly bad management of the chat systems, honestly if I actually cared anymore, I'd rant 4x longer. It's *mind boggling* how badly it's been managed for the best part of half a decade, maybe longer.
Nope an no, just no. WhatsApp (while not perfect) is destroying what you offer. Just give up.
But can you automatically set the FROM reply address in the process? That's what's been missing. It's a really basic tool for managing multiple hats:
How it should work:
o Email comes in to nick@a.com
o Reply goes out from yourChosenNick@a.com
o Email comes in to nick@b.com
o Reply goes out from anotherChosenNick@b.com
How it's been working:
o Email comes in to nick@a.com
o Reply goes out from you@gmail.com
o Email comes in to nick@b.com
o Reply goes out from you@gmail.com
It's not good to reply to different inputs from different domains with only one fixed email address as the reply. It's confusing / unclear to the recipient.
I do like WhatsApp, but it does NOT have a desktop client, and does NOT have a web client.
The pseudo desktop client actually links to your phone, so you must keep WhatsApp active on your phone to use the Desktop app.
Same with web client, it's just an echo of the phone app.
Also you cannot have more than one desktop/web client active at a time, frustrating.
I blame the antifeatures. Hangout would be semi-usable, if it wasn't constantly trying to get me to invite people to Hangout, instead of sending them SMS like it knew I wanted to.
I cared about their chat offering until they abandoned open protocols for walled gardens then it lost all value to me.
am I the only one worried that the app uses electrum?
I just attempted to sign up for this and it requires a credit card and a domain with email services running on it.
If you do not have your own domain, with email, it offers to create one, for a fee.
bailed, unsubscribed, flew the bird @google.
I'm starting to get really frustrated with chat apps. It's starting to get as bad as the 90s. Slack isn't very stable for me and has all kinds of annoying limitations for free as well as really annoying things like expanding links and taking up the entire chat with it. The UI just sucks. Skype for all its sins hasn't been too bad except for advertising and Skype for Business just boggles the mind. It takes what was a simple and usable interface and turns it into something that's really awkward to use. Similarly, they recently crippled skype on the phone with a new kiddy interface that now makes it impossible to use seriously.
1) G-suite with domain required. There's no way to subscribe to this as an add-on to existing infrastructure, which is where Slack thrives currently. 2) No ability to invite people outside your org. Again, Slack has Google beat here. You can invite (sub)contractors to your Slack instance without having to create internal credentials for them. Mind you, I hate using these chat apps for work. However, as someone that's had to manage Slack for an organization it's still the bees knees for teams that incorporate it.
Never mind what I said about Ryver. They just went full-on charge-for-use for over 6 users; no reason to look at them now.
Time to set up things like local-server-based chat systems.