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Comment by mderazon | Hacker News Reader

Not a single comment here mention Google's Hangouts Chat

I'm not surprised, it's a garbage product.

We use it at work since it's bundled for free with GSuite

But - The name is just awful, you can't even find it in Google's search since the previous (still live) Hangout chat app overshadows all search results - Integrations and ecosystem around it is non existent - App doesn't see any meaningful updates - The Android app is so crappy I don't even know when to begin. Try initiating a conversation with some person by searching them. Or try sharing something from Android to a channel only to realize you cannot search for the channel in the list - Api to write bots is pretty badly designed - When you edit your message you cannot mention people anymore - Deleted GSuite users just keep floating around as ghosts

I give this product a year top before it is canned

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It's amazing just how bad Google's UIs are, across all their products. There are two different versions of "archived" in Gmail. Maps hides options for types of routes under a settings menu under a screen fold (rather than toggles when you ask for alternate routes). Basic Android features like "stop a process" moves location seemingly every year. I was so confused by GCP that I just went with Azure and got on with life.

I find Apple's interfaces confusing because I've been a Windows developer for 20 years, but at least they seem to stay consistent. Microsoft is in the middle of completely revamping their settings UI, but I agree with the forgot they are going on and they at least didn't delete the old UIs. WTF is wrong with Google?

RIP Inbox. Still a drastically better UI for a lot of users than Gmail is.

It was terribly slow/heavy though. Although the Gmail hi isn't much faster either. I think outlook/office365 email has a much faster and better ui.

I stopped using it about a year ago and was quite dissatisfied as well. Kinda thought they’d put a bit more effort to create a good product afterwards but somehow it looks like a low priority thing for Google. I don’t know why, they could be a very solid competitor and maybe even have an excuse to raise GSuite prices.

Google products experience a self-fullfilling prophecy of not getting serious effort put into them because everyone expects Google to kill it in 16 months, so it never takes off with users, so Google cuts the project.

The really goats part is that the engagement levels that Google considers to be "crap" would make any SV startup a darling Unicorn in their next funding round. But compared to making money hand over fist on click-fraud-plagued ads, it just can't compete.

> since the previous (still live) Hangout chat app overshadows all search results

Not for long, as it's been killed and is now moribund.

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