While Messages and RCS is how Google wants you to message friends, Google Chat also fits that role and the company today reminded us...

tl;dr: after pushing rcs so hard for years, killing hangouts well after forgetting about it, & hiding it from gmail, google now wants you to use its (and google allo’s) successor, google chat.

  • chris. (@nihilx7E3)OPEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    same, back ~2015-2018 i was hangouts’ biggest fan. now i avoid most google platforms in general aside from gmail, android & youtube. i can’t trust anything else to stay around anymore, & even when they do keep an app alive they end up just endlessly shuffling them around like this for no reason

    • @yamasaurEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      I feel the same way used to love hangouts, tried allo. But at this point I don’t even use rcs because although it’s “open” no third party developers can make apps for it. Using matrix with bridges via beeper is how I integrate all my chats now and makes life way easier

    • @Toribor@corndog.ukEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Using Google apps used to be a smooth and seamless experience but it’s become a slog. The best you can hope for is that they’ll just stop supporting whatever service you like and just let it rot without updates for years while you are allowed to keep using it. Otherwise they’ll just force you to migrate around constantly while merging or fragmenting the experience until the former happens anyway.

      It’s exhausting and it’s utterly destroyed my desire to check out anything new in their ecosystem.