I give it 2 years. Maybe only 18 months. I don't even know how many different (and confusing!) chat applications Google has launched already. Seems like their engineers, when they get bored, write a chat app.
Next time I see someone mention how great their monolithic repository is I'll ask how many chat applications you have to checkout before you can code at google.
There was an article posted on here a few months ago about Google's version control system. One of the main features is that you don't actually checkout copies of every file in the repository; instead they're faulted in as you need them.
My impression is that the monolithic repository only works because Google's built a bunch of custom tooling to support it. It doesn't mean any company can just roll all of their code into a single Git repository and call it a day.
This is overblown, the biggest thing they did this to was Reader, and that was hardly an "ecosystem" app without any way to use a stand-in replacement within minutes.
Nope. It's more or less glorified invite message over a service, that also receives replies from SMS. But since it doesn't show as sent from your mobile number, the receiver will have a separate thread in their SMS application.
...so if I used Google Allo, I would still need to also use Google Messenger for MMS conversations and Facebook Messenger for conversations with less-nerdy people.
The only thing Allo seems to have going for it is that it's not another blue speech bubble icon labeled "Messenger".
I'm surprised Google Duo hasn't become more popular. It's a great cross-platform video chat app. I especially like the feature where you can see the other party before you answer their call. I have taken calls because of that feature that I otherwise wouldn't have.
It's better than FaceTime because it works on Android. It's better than Skype and Google Hangouts because your cellphone number is your identity; you don't have to log in with any usernames or passwords. Extremely low friction.
I'll use everything Google, but Duo has been the most stupid video chat app I've ever used. That's because in countries where the common household internet is still not that fast, it 'aggressively' pauses (completely removes) the video for long intervals in every few minutes citing slow connection. That's a frustrating experience. I generally get around 10-12 Mbps speed (which is on the higher side in India), and my family in another city have a 4 Mbps connection - it still pauses the video regularly when we talk - and eventually we switch to skype because it at least shows something, even if pixelated. I'm as disappointed by this 'feature' as excited I was before trying Duo.
What's the latency of your connection? You can get 4 Mbps throughput (which is not a lot by itself, BTW), but the latency may be too high for a video chat.
Yes, 4Mbps is not a lot, but since Skype shows something, Duo is effectively worse for me. I didn't measure the latency of my parents' connection. Will have to do it next time I'm there.
What's the uplink speed on the other end (presumably 4Mbps is downlink)? That would be a more limiting factor in the quality of the video you see on your end.
But then I recall we had working video chat a decade ago with only a few hundred Kbps...
Given that I don't know anything about this domain, in my experience "supports" doesn't necessarily mean "supports well" or "there is no technical reason the browser stack slows this down, it's only the client's fault" or "would have been much easier to support in another stack without going through all this shit".
I'm having the same issue with Duo. it pauses the video frequently. I switched back to FB Messenger, which just works without pausing video.
Google had said something about Google Duo being bandwidth friendly and good for slow connections but FB Messenger is miles ahead, at least in my usage. Which left me quite disappointed with Duo, as I like the idea of using Duo over FB.
Perhaps it doesn't have the features of Hangouts while it does have the requirement that you install another app and the stigma of it being a Google product (i.e. they collect all your info). Also lacks messaging capabilities.
It can only be used for very short 1 on 1 phone calls since I can't imagine video chatting for a long time from a phone. Also it can't be used with a desktop.
Otherwise, Skype and Hangouts are way better plus any decent WebRTC P2P chat like www.appear.in
Facebook Messenger has all of those advantages and even more, since your name is your identity and not something that requires exchange like a phone number.
I suspect the "video preview" feature will come soon to Facebook Messenger, which has been developing quickly.
I think there are other reasons, but I really dislike using my phone number as an ID.
Phone numbers are much harder to change , so if some annoying person gets a hold of it suddenly they can harass me across networks. This is a thing that actually happens! A big reason why I don't like telegram (even if everything else is awesome).
I'm cool with my account being linked to a phone number, but I'd rather avoid giving the phone number to people I want to talk to (instead handing out a network-specific username)
I suddenly got hit with a flurry of spam calls today which furthers my distaste for giving out a phone number. If only giving out free limited use phone numbers was a thing.
Even worse is when you loose your phone. I just lost mine (still hoping some nice Berliner turned it into the lost and found) and I guess I've gone and lost all my whatsapp history + contacts there.
These people would be able to converse with you on Telegram but would not be able to find your phone number on the app/site.
Wire is a platform/client that allows setting up accounts with email address and/or phone number, although when I set it up I had to provide a phone number. Contact sharing is not perfect yet. It also has end-to-end encryption by default, has multi-device and multi-platform sync, and some other cool features (doodling, for example).
Shouldn't this work both ways, where if someone does harass you, that they have a phone number to sing into systems allows you to easily block them across all channels. Combined with Android spam blocker it could work well.
That said I'd like 2 user options on my phone more to separate work/personal so I can turn off one but not the other.
Creating an email account is cheaper and easier than that, yet Gmail and others do a great job blocking spam. Any reason why similar identifying rules can't be brought to phone numbers?
Shouldn't this work both ways, where if someone does harass you, that they have a phone number to sing into systems allows you to easily block them across all channels. Combined with Android spam blocker it could work well.
That said I'd like 2 user options on my phone more to separate work/personal so I can turn off one but not the other.
It also effectively locks out the use of that service on a non-mobile operating system unless you tether your Android or IOS smartphone to it. It seems really backwards to force the use of specific (proprietary) client software and specific operating systems in an age where every modern operating system can technically participate on the internet.
> I'm surprised Google Duo hasn't become more popular.
The market is incredibly saturated in the chat space. Google keeps creating new things with new names (which they will eventually kill off) and the rest of the market is just completely saturated. WeChat, WhatsApp, Skype, FaceTime, Messenger, SnapChat, HangOuts; and that's the short list. It's getting out of hand.
The chat model is incredibly difficult to monetize too. None that don't have other vertical product lines have shown an ability to properly monetize in a way to turn a profit. Eventually that will matter, but for now money grows on trees in the Valley so no one cares.
I almost feel like the sort of joke that "we can't just keep selling each other insurance" as a criticism of the of banking sector could easily be rewritten with chat apps and the Valley.
I find it hard to find any explanation for this behaviour that fits except for the rather bleak suspicion that right now all that matters is gaining market share and locking people into your walled garden. Perhaps they are getting some return on investment now by creating ever more detailed advertising profiles on their users, but that doesn't seem sustainable — it strikes me as rather bubblish.
I wonder what the long term vision is. More data harvesting for advertising? Become the de facto platform for services offered through your chat network? The latter reminds of how every company needed a presence in Second Life to engage with customers and leads…
I guess it'll depend on the emerging markets with slow(er) connections when Duo really shines (presumably it can work on 3G and fallback to audio only on even slower connections).
I live in New York City and there are very few places outside the home where you can hold up your phone like a pocket mirror and speak into it without looking like an asshole.
I've seen tons of people video chatting throughout public spaces in NYC, usually with headphones on so they can hear the other person. None of those people looked "like an asshole"
How is it different from having a conversation with the person next to you? Wait, are those assholes too? Or just when you can understand one of them, but not the other? Oh the misanthropy ...
Because it's the because subset of loud conversations I'm subjected too. I also find it much more distracting when you can only hear one side of the conversation.
I was introduced to Duo by a family friend who is 70. He uses it to talk to his grandchlidren. He's an Android user (refuses to use iPhone since he used to sell to Apple back in the 80's and has never been a fan of their business practices); other family members use iOS. His extended family lives in the South. He lives in California. Duo brought their family closer as they talk to each other during the first days of their grandchildren's school days.
I expect similar use cases to exist around the country.
The phone number as ID is huge for the non superuser crowd. This is part of the reason why LINE took off in Japan.
The thing that irritates me about this is Hangouts could already do exactly that, long before Messenger could, and did it really well. It's by far my preferred messaging app but no one but my wife actually uses it, so I'm stuck using Messenger instead.
I'm in roughly the same position, and the absolutely frustrating thing is that they had (on gchat) the largest chat network at precisely the point where chat-over-IP started to skyrocket in usage. But then Google spent a year (apparently) willfully chasing away users from their communications products through obscenely incompetent product decisions over the next decade.
I spent almost half a decade at Google, and I _know_ that their product people are fairly competent, but the company is so badly run on the product side (in terms of incentives, etc) that product at Google has the emergent property of being extremely, extremely bad at what they do.
What would be better if to have a client that keeps all of a contacted communiqués together - like messenger but with that person's direct tweets to you, and your hangout chats, and your live.com emails, ... that to me is the holy grail of messaging.
I know, but nobody else will ever know because Google keeps losing all of its users to itself. Everybody I know got frustrated and moved on to things that just work... like ancient SMS, FaceTime, Facebook, etc. If you say "google" anything to them they just say; too complicated, doesn't work, UX sucks, etc. I think in reference to the UX people are speaking to chrome plugins.
> I'm surprised Google Duo hasn't become more popular. It's a great cross-platform video chat app.
For apps that rely on network effects, pure feature competition isn't the only (or sadly, even the most) relevant factor. I commented on this in the Duo announcement thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12295847), but the gist was something like:
With GChat, they squandered a massive, decade-early networks effect advantage with ten years of inexplicably idiotic product decisions, rebranding, failure to adequately replace deprecated products, etc. I actually generally consider them to have the absolute best products in terms of feature quality, far more often than not; Yet at this point, I can't imagine why anyone would see a Google product that relies on network effects at all and not run as far away as fast as possible.
>i'm surprised Google Duo hasn't become more popular.//
I'm semi-actively looking for alternatives to Skype and hadn't heard of Duo.
I've an Android phone, they jam in so much junk I don't need, surprised not have had a notification of a Google communication app.
Personally I feel the space needs to be democratised badly. We need some way to take control of contacts lists so they can be locally (to the user) synced outside of any app and have a protocol like XMPP that's common across carriers so that [video] chat clients become like PSTN telephones.
Google shut down XMPP support because none of the other large vendors were playing along. Because of how XMPP federation work, Microsoft could reach out to Google for presence and other information about friends, but didn't need to return the favor (they were doing one way federation). So it allowed for a "better" experience using other companies XMPP networks.
Are you thinking of client-to-server federation? Google didn't cancel support for that (and supports it to this day: I still use pidgin here and there to connect to GChat). That's not what this conversation is about: Google's cancellation of server-to-server federation. Facebook definitely didn't support that at the time that Google cancelled it, and to my recollection, never did (though I may be wrong).
As far as I know Google didn't cancel server to server federation, but they refused to support encryption for it, and it's as good as cancelled, because most servers made it mandatory at some point. That's what caused all my contacts who use Google to disappear. Very annoying, and it's completely Google's fault. Anyway, the reason they left it to rot is because they abandoned XMPP for "greener pa$tures".
Why isn't it always end to end encryption? I'm getting really paranoid and crochety in my old age of 29, as all I see is a tool to make me the product.
This was what popped out to me immediately in the bit where they write about TLS.
I wonder whether this user driven approach is because of pressure from governments on encrypted chats or something else
But, they could have it encrypted except when you explicitly message the assistant. They can also get the full text of the conversation on-device and do the machine learning on it. After all, Apple is doing it for photos, so text should be easier.
I think context-switching in terms of privacy in the middle of a conversation is more risky than doing so between different conversations (ideally with different visuals) or especially between applications. For me, having to remember that certain comments within conversations are not private (especially when said comments are looping in something that's designed to provide context to previous comments) is more problematic than having to remember that certain conversations are not private.
I wouldn't know, but from what one can hear from prominent Apple pundits and podcasters, Apple is not doing great at all in this regard, to put it mildly, compared to Google (and other data vacuumers). Examples: Google Photos is running circles around Photos, and Alexa around Siri. People who love and live Apple admit Apple is pathetic in this space. I doubt it's because Apple is incompetent. These problems require huge amounts of data and processing power. You can't do that locally on a mobile device (or even a PC class computer).
Alexa is basically an audio command line. You have to say things specifically. Plus, Alexa is pretty restrictive in that it only needs to handle English (and American English at that). It also has a limited set of things it can do since it's only audio.
With Siri you can actually mix languages. So you can ask in French about an English film title. I don't know how good Alexa is about these kinds of things. Considering that it's only for the US, I can't know.
I don't know if Google Photos is running circles around Photos. I know a new version just came out with macOS Sierra. I just read an article today over on Six Colours that praised its search capabilities. I don't use Google Photos or Apple's. I haven't had a camera in years and only got my first cell phone this year (I was given an iPhone 5).
I completely rule Alexa out from these kinds of discussions until Amazon bothers to sell it elsewhere. It's been a consistent issue with Amazon. It took several years before we got the Kindle in Canada, we were promised Amazon's MP3 store, but we're still waiting. Our Amazon Prime only covers shipping, not any of the books or video.
Siri does what I need it to do on my phone, but I don't really ask for much. I mainly use it for timers and creating appointments. Those have all worked perfectly, even when I'm standing right next to my kitchen fan or the speakers of my stereo.
Hm, interesting. Well, as I said, I don't know personally (I have neither an Apple device nor Alexa), but that was my impression from what people who love Apple and also have Alexa and Google Photos say.
As for Google Photos, it makes mistakes, false positives mostly (as a funny example, for my photos so far it consistently thinks cats are dogs, although it also recognizes the same cats correctly) and sometimes it's too “eager” (“cars” will produce results where cars should be but are not actually in the photo). Sometimes it makes bizarrely trivial mistakes considering how smart it is generally: it categorized photos of human cadavers and anatomy specimens I made at the local university institute of anatomy as “Christmas”, I guess because they were made on Christmas day. But it will correctly find true positives. It also correctly visually recognizes notable places globally (that is, without geotags) and various things, concepts etc. even if they're a completely marginal subject in a photo. One thing that impressed me was a cat video it edited out of multiple clips with almost perfect music some 5-10 minutes after I uploaded the first items and started using it.
People are pretty happy with Alexa, but I've heard it's pretty strict in how you say things. The 3rd party extensions require you to ask things with specific phrases which makes things a lot easier to handle, but it's harder for the user.
The post about Apple's Photos I found linked on Six Colours, but it's on Macworld [1]. In it, he searches for a zebra and it gave his few photos that he took of zebras at the zoo. So, that worked well, but the search for dogs made the same mistake as you state Google Photos made (cats mistaken for dogs). So, I think that Apple's Photos is probably somewhat close to Google Photos, but maybe not quite as good. It's not exactly Google running circles around it.
it's not always-on end-to-end encryption because the standout feature is the google assistant. literally the whole selling point of the app is that google is always listening in. If you want google's assistant to not be continually monitoring your conversations, then allo is definitely not the app for you.
but assistant is supposed to be reading all the messages in the conversation, in order to provide relevant replies.
why not just use one of the many other apps that does provide end-to-end encryption, if it's something you want? Some feature sets are simply not compatible. If people keep insisting on end-to-end, google will implement it and then scan all your replies on either end and send them to their servers after the end instead of intercepting them, so they can tick off the E2E box. It's better for everybody's privacy to simply accept that some apps aren't private than trying to shoehorn privacy into apps that are antithetical to it.
Oh, I have no interest in using the app because I don't trust Google. I just wanted to make a point about how they could include end-to-end encryption while still having their assistant provide similar functionality to their examples; looking up sushi making videos, finding restaurants, and providing directions. It's obvious why they don't though, and it's the reason I'll be skipping this app.
The assistant can reside on your phone, either integrated in the app or communicating with the app. You will have end-to-end encryption.
It is just a definition of what "end" means. The phone? The app? The screen? Your eyes? With real end-to-end encryption nobody should be able to read over your shoulder and it should be delivered directly to your retina.
Note that such an assistant can itself be connected to the internet again.
Personally I'm not against a setup like this. I have encrypted communication through corporate servers, but would like to open up my end to this or other parties.
Edit: I didn't mean you didn't say this already, just wanted to explore the point you already made.
> assistant is supposed to be reading all the messages in the conversation, in order to provide relevant replies.
They could totally have made assistant run locally, but it's easier for them to run it on a server:
- It saves battery to run big computations on something that does not run on a battery (their servers);
- They can use techniques that require more processing power;
- They can patch whenever and whatever they want, since it's all on-premises for them; and
- And as a bonus, you know what people are interested in and talking about.
Most privacy minded people probably wouldn't install it anyway, it being closed source and by Google, so the few that you send away by this is a small number. And it adds network dependency and latency, but it's a messaging app - you need network connectivity anyway.
So I can totally see why they do it. I can also tell I'm never going to install this Google-run assistant and why I'm going to tell everyone to stay away.
Extending functionality with third party sandboxed apps, without any @something hoopla to call a pseudo-intelligent assistant, is much more secure and even more functional in my opinion. (i.e. iMessage).
I am like you. In the past I wouldn't pay attention to privacy issues and I would enjoy free services such as Google Drive or Facebook Messenger, but that recently changed. In my case, the trigger was exactly the thought that you expressed so effectively:
> All I see is a tool to make me the product.
I think you're right, and you're not paranoid at all.
I'm now using only open source tools both on PC and on Android (courtesy of F-Droid), switched from Gmail to Mailbox.org and from Chrome to Firefox with all privacy settings turned on (no tracking, no long term cookies etc.), switched from GDrive and Dropbox to my own private cloud solution (using a NAS + Owncloud), started using PGP for email, and currently trying to get my friends to use Signal for instant messaging.
First world problems? Maybe, but I don't like to be sold in exchange for free-of-charge services.
>> First world problems? Maybe, but I don't like to be sold in exchange for free-of-charge services.
Switched from Chrome to Firefox as well. I switched to Microsoft cloud products ( Office, 'SkyDrive' or whatever it's called now ) to get away from Google, or at least from having so many eggs in the Google basket.
I don't like being sold either. It makes me feel like a slave.
I'm back from that paranoia period, my conclusions:
- In real life you have no privacy, but still you don't think about it (white pages, community hall inscriptions, driving license, medical history, ...), apart of white pages try to unsubscribe from any of them and see what happens. Internet made it just easier to track you.
- your safety is based on 2 things your habits and the peers that know you and are willing to lend a hand (family, neighbors, friends ...)
- what makes me feel secure about Google tools, is his business model, if they have a breach and expose people's data, they simply bankrupt, so their business relays heavily in security. (as soon as you enable 2 time factor, it becomes incredible difficult to hack you)
- what I don't like of them, they are in EEUU soil and I'm European, so I don't know if I could eventually get into trouble (like is happening in Facebook, they simply don't listen to European cases about cyberbulling, something I didn't read yet from Google, maybe because they are not so popular, maybe because they are truly Not Evil).
- so yes, I'm a product, and it also unlocks me to easily backup and access my family photos, that I can share via chromecast, or get my mails free from non nice spam and eventually find nice new products and know that I can click without exposing myself too much.
- I do have kids, and what comforts me, I can delegate to Google the block of certain images/sites thanks to their advance AI, still is not perfect so by the time they start, I'll also keep an eye. It is different to explain something bad that he just accidentally found, that place them out of his way until he has the age to understand it.
- and don't get started with the zero days exploits, the wrong architecture of some open source apps, and even the abandonware you have out there for free.
At the end, you need to trade something because one person alone can't get everything, and trust between peers is essential. And money made that trust easy, don't trust people, trust that they want the money :)
Wrong, in real life random conversations are not recorded for an unspecified time.
The databases you mention have serious judicial requirements (in EU) and no free access by a company. Leaks of course happen, but they are treated seriously and are news items.
If Google had a breach, they'd do the same as everyone: cover it up or PR it down and fix it. They won't go bankrupt over even a string of break-ins.
There is less reason to trust them as they are an American company. In fact NSA had free reign over their data at some time and they didn't know about it.
While I would trust them much more than a random startup, trusting their database handling is different. Local, non collated data is often safest. Plus you're not a big target as a single person most of the time.
Well, real live conversations differ from digital ones. Granted that now we can talk about that topic without being in the same room, but depending the topic you won't word your opinion in certain channels, you self censored yourself depending where you are, that's why more than privacy or security what is needed is knowledge about the channel.
I might got wrong the reasons why Google is secure, but I found it convincing
In real life you have no privacy
Please remove all locks from your doors and give me your address so I can watch you and whole family 24/7. Privacy starts at home. It exists.
so yes, I'm a product, and it also unlocks me to easily backup and access my family photos, that I can share via chromecast, or get my mails free from non nice spam and eventually find nice new products and know that I can click without exposing myself too much.
With all their services google gets to know most of your thoughts. You don't care. It's okay, I don't blame you. But please do not tell others "there is no privacy" just because you threw yours away for some services that make your life a bit more comfortable.
maybe because they are truly Not Evil
'You have to fight for your privacy or you will lose it' - Eric Schmidt.
We (meaning mostly you) lost it a long time ago already. They sometimes show their evil face - you just don't remember/know/care.
delegate to Google the block of certain images/sites thanks to their advance AI
This is kinda 1984 7.0 - just wait for them enabling it for everyone. Page ranks can/could decide elections already - do you really want them having so much power over everyone? Just because their search results are a bit better (read: personalised) than duckduckgo/etc. ? I sometimes really understand the need for russian/chinese firewalls. Even Canada (reminder: member of the 5 eyes) refuses to send their country-internal internet traffic through the USA even it would be cheaper and faster at the same time. It's forbidden by law.
At the end, you need to trade something because one person alone can't get everything, and trust between peers is essential. And money made that trust easy, don't trust people, trust that they want the money :)
In my eyes, you trade away far more than they give you.
Well, one of my habits is to keep those locks and avoid giving the address unless is really necessary. Certainly you can eventually find where I live and pay a visit, but I can ask you politely to leave or call the cops on you if your intentions are hostile, otherwise we can go to a neutral place, have a nice beer and chat about the topic. I see you mix privacy with security, please don't ;-)
Your second point is quite vast to reply here, but one example: think one second of a daughter that she wants to find her favorite princess in the internet without filter you find quite some porn actress with those names, and because are popular ... paaaam first place. Now how I explain to an infant what those girls are doing, wouldn't be easier to wait until she gets the maturity and I can explain better?
The last point, is my opinion nothing more. Is always a trade, it depends how much you will trade.
> what makes me feel secure about Google tools, is his business model, if they have a breach and expose people's data, they simply bankrupt, so their business relays heavily in security.
I wouldn't disagree with a statement that Google pays a lot of attention to security, but I doubt it would go bankrupt if there were a breach. There are many big companies that have suffered data breaches but haven't gone bankrupt yet. They just move on with some impact and/or some compensation to their customers, like identity theft protection. <insert any "free+you're the product" quotes here>
You do realize that's basically what's going to happen with this app yes?
I'm pretty much done with Google IM products. I have a few contacts that will keep using hangouts, but for the rest I either have them on Facebook or iMessage.
Easier to create a new code base and infrastructure than to bolt all the new features onto the old Hangouts code base. It also avoids the flip side argument/outcome to including it "I hate all these new features, it's ruined Hangouts."
Hangouts almost nailed it, to be honest. For the people that I know who have both Hangouts and Whatsapp, we prefer Hangouts consistently - even for just text. The problem is that Google realised the importance of IM far too late and Whatsapp is now entrenched. Google is throwing solutions at the wall to see which sticks.
It honestly doesn't seem like a bad attempt. Totally would have preferred it in Hangouts, though, I'll probably drop Google IM altogether if Hangouts/XMPP C2S is not supported.
> For the people that I know who have both Hangouts and Whatsapp, we prefer Hangouts consistently - even for just text.
Speaking for myself, I've found Hangouts to be a noticeable drain on my battery (iOS), while WhatsApp seems negligible.
I'm also on a smaller screen iPhone, and with the icon bar and the timestamp placement in Hangouts, I can read far fewer messages on the screen at the same time than with WhatsApp.
Personal preference, but I also like that WhatsApp uses the iOS emoji across platforms, so I know what emoji my recipient is getting – when I use an emoji in Hangouts, they get replaced by a Google emoji, and I never know what it's going to look like until I've already sent the message.
Finally, Hangouts doesn't use end-to-end encryption, which personally makes me feel very uncomfortable (I also didn't like using WhatsApp for a long time for the same reason).
This is anecdotal, but to me it's more than WhatsApp just being entrenched – in many ways, they really do have the better product.
If I'm bound to switch to something and bring friends to it, I'll rather do it with Wire[1], without any Google surveillance and data mining for "ad experience". It has a desktop client (electron based though) and isn't limited to 1 device. Not to mention E2E encryption ALL the time.
They're VC backed and plan a premium subscription sometime in the future. All of the current features will stay free. I think I've read it on their medium comment section or it's in the FAQ.
Isn't the main feature of this (smart reply) something that can be easily implemented by other messaging apps? And the stickers/emojis and Google Assistant are already available in other apps. Granted, Google has the power to integrate things really well and make it a premium experience that can win users over. Also, how does this relate to Google Hangouts/Gmail Chat? Lots of questions so it will be interesting to see how this will turn out.
> It has fallback to SMS functionality, but SMS apps are rejected from the Apple App store.
Which guideline are you thinking of? My search for "SMS" only found two unrelated guidelines:
> 1.1.6 False information and features, including inaccurate device data or trick/joke functionality, such as fake location trackers. Stating that the app is “for entertainment purposes” won’t overcome this guideline. Apps that enable anonymous or prank phone calls or SMS/MMS messaging will be rejected.
> 3.2.2 (iv) Collecting funds within the app for charities and fundraisers. Apps that seek to raise money for such causes must be free on the App Store and may only collect funds outside of the app, such as via Safari or SMS.
Sounds like Google are SMSing you from their own number, on behalf of Allo users -- at least for iPhone. If you click on the iPhone tab of that page, you see the following:
Respond to a message without downloading Allo
When you receive a message from an Allo user, you have a few options:
Reply with a text message to continue chatting with the Allo user.
To stop receiving messages from Allo users, text "STOP."
Looks like this is an attempt to do the same thing that iMessage has done for iPhone. If Apple released iMessage for Android it would probably lay waste to most other messaging services. People will pay to get upgraded to the blue bubble.
I don't like canned replies. I made a tampermonkey [0] user script [1] to remove auto reply suggestions from Google Inbox, they drove me nuts. I found them utterly patronising! If only I could remove them from my phone, too.
From those gifs in the post, I assume it requires Google to scan every word I send. It will sense my tone to change the text style, and suggest how I should response. Well, why don't you just say it for me then? I'd love to see a bot representing me talks to my friends. And, a messaging app provides Incognito mode, lol, is there any other way to imply my conversation isn't private enough?
So the play store still shows this as coming soon for me. They did the same type of launch for Duo and I really don't understand what they have to gain from this.
They're making a reentry into a very populated space. Facebook messenger, whatsapp, Skype, iMessage... why would you risk the scenario where someone finds this blog post in a newsfeed, looks at the app, finds it unavailable, and never returns?
It just doesn't make any sense to me. Clearly they're going to launch sometime in the next 12 hours. So the infrastructure is all in place and the final builds are made. Why not wait on the press release until it's actually available?
Especially because the two biggest competitors (FB messenger and Whatsapp) have phone calls in their chat apps. I think a lot of people will be disappointed finding out that you can't use voice in Allo.
Inbox does this too and in my brief experience so far, it's been accurate.
I remember hearing about Amazon pre-emptively shipping goods to warehouses based on expected demand. If algorithms can anticipate our responses and our shopping, what will be left in the end?
I think it's a big difference to Amazon. They just forecast that in a given city x people will likely buy a certain product, so they already ship it there and only have to attach labels when it's ordered.
Google tries to exactly forecast what you will want to respond to a picture, which sounds a lot harder.
Not commenting so much on the difficulty or differences as much as on the ability of software/analysis to anticipate us, gradually doing what makes us us. With my buying history, analysis could do a reasonable job of choosing and buying my future clothes. Spotify suggests decent music based on what I've previously liked. With relevant data, a service could feed me satisfying food I liked.
This reminds me a lot of Telegram in incognito vs secret chat and the stickers. I wish Google good luck in such a competive field and especially one that is completely dependent on the network effect
Google's Duo/Allo strategy is the final straw after adopting Google Voice like 10 years and hoping that eventually Hangouts would not a pile of crap.
Beside the limbo that this leaves Hangouts in, Allo and Duo have no web/desktop client, which is where I do 90% of my messaging. I've made too many excuses and put up with half-assed experiences for the past 5-10 years. Unfortunately, my options are probably Facebook messaging or raw SMS.
Meanwhile Riot/Matrix have all of the functionality of Slack/Skype/Hangouts/etc, is open source, is federated, etc... and no one seems to care...
(Not to mention that I still can't even download Allo if I try...)
>We can’t wait for you to say hello to Google Allo! We’re beginning to roll out Google Allo for Android and iOS, and the app will be available worldwide in the next few days.
I wonder if they are doing this because they expect issues or if they expect everyone to want the app.
Personally, I just wish the stock Android messenger could communicate better with imessage group chats.
Without a valid macOS/iOS device key, it's not possible. The key allows your device to publish iMessage signing keys to the Apple directory service that recipient devices use to decrypt your iMessages. Without a device key, your device won't be able to do this.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 412 ms ] threadMy impression is that the monolithic repository only works because Google's built a bunch of custom tooling to support it. It doesn't mean any company can just roll all of their code into a single Git repository and call it a day.
The key here is CITC. All the source code lives "in the cloud" and pulls to your machine as it's needed (using a FUSE file system).
It was a full-blown social network for a while.
Google has no choice. I also don't expect them to fold up shop unless the 'bot market just fizzles.
https://support.google.com/allo/answer/6376011
[edit] Not from personal number it seems : http://www.reddit.com/r/projectfi/comments/53rhk8/_/
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/09/20/allo-weird-sms-expla...
The only thing Allo seems to have going for it is that it's not another blue speech bubble icon labeled "Messenger".
It's better than FaceTime because it works on Android. It's better than Skype and Google Hangouts because your cellphone number is your identity; you don't have to log in with any usernames or passwords. Extremely low friction.
It is usually lack of bandwidth or major packet loss that cause trouble.
But then I recall we had working video chat a decade ago with only a few hundred Kbps...
This! Even in appear.in, which is one of the most stable, I encounter connection problems almost daily.
Is it because all these new apps have to go through the browser stack?
So I'm still not convinced.
Google had said something about Google Duo being bandwidth friendly and good for slow connections but FB Messenger is miles ahead, at least in my usage. Which left me quite disappointed with Duo, as I like the idea of using Duo over FB.
Perhaps it doesn't have the features of Hangouts while it does have the requirement that you install another app and the stigma of it being a Google product (i.e. they collect all your info). Also lacks messaging capabilities.
It can only be used for very short 1 on 1 phone calls since I can't imagine video chatting for a long time from a phone. Also it can't be used with a desktop.
Otherwise, Skype and Hangouts are way better plus any decent WebRTC P2P chat like www.appear.in
I suspect the "video preview" feature will come soon to Facebook Messenger, which has been developing quickly.
[0]: http://lifehacker.com/you-can-now-use-facebook-messenger-wit...
Phone numbers are much harder to change , so if some annoying person gets a hold of it suddenly they can harass me across networks. This is a thing that actually happens! A big reason why I don't like telegram (even if everything else is awesome).
I'm cool with my account being linked to a phone number, but I'd rather avoid giving the phone number to people I want to talk to (instead handing out a network-specific username)
I suddenly got hit with a flurry of spam calls today which furthers my distaste for giving out a phone number. If only giving out free limited use phone numbers was a thing.
For contacts it just uses the system address book.
These people would be able to converse with you on Telegram but would not be able to find your phone number on the app/site.
Wire is a platform/client that allows setting up accounts with email address and/or phone number, although when I set it up I had to provide a phone number. Contact sharing is not perfect yet. It also has end-to-end encryption by default, has multi-device and multi-platform sync, and some other cool features (doodling, for example).
That said I'd like 2 user options on my phone more to separate work/personal so I can turn off one but not the other.
Changing your phone number and getting everyone who still has the old to change over can take years.
To ensure your emails actually arrive in GMail, the only sure way is using GMail yourself.
Otherwise, you’ll never be able to be sure they arrive.
That’s like every ISP only allowing people from the same ISP to call them, and then increasing the cost to creating a new phone number.
Sure, now you prevent spam calls, but you also make phones unusable.
That said I'd like 2 user options on my phone more to separate work/personal so I can turn off one but not the other.
The market is incredibly saturated in the chat space. Google keeps creating new things with new names (which they will eventually kill off) and the rest of the market is just completely saturated. WeChat, WhatsApp, Skype, FaceTime, Messenger, SnapChat, HangOuts; and that's the short list. It's getting out of hand.
The chat model is incredibly difficult to monetize too. None that don't have other vertical product lines have shown an ability to properly monetize in a way to turn a profit. Eventually that will matter, but for now money grows on trees in the Valley so no one cares.
I almost feel like the sort of joke that "we can't just keep selling each other insurance" as a criticism of the of banking sector could easily be rewritten with chat apps and the Valley.
I wonder what the long term vision is. More data harvesting for advertising? Become the de facto platform for services offered through your chat network? The latter reminds of how every company needed a presence in Second Life to engage with customers and leads…
At least put the speakerphone on so we can hear both sides of the conversation.
I expect similar use cases to exist around the country.
The phone number as ID is huge for the non superuser crowd. This is part of the reason why LINE took off in Japan.
I much prefer Facebook Messenger where its about the contact, and u call/msg/video them and its all there in one stream.
Google's disjointed approach to messaging/calling doesn't make sense to me or my non-techie friends.
I spent almost half a decade at Google, and I _know_ that their product people are fairly competent, but the company is so badly run on the product side (in terms of incentives, etc) that product at Google has the emergent property of being extremely, extremely bad at what they do.
For apps that rely on network effects, pure feature competition isn't the only (or sadly, even the most) relevant factor. I commented on this in the Duo announcement thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12295847), but the gist was something like:
With GChat, they squandered a massive, decade-early networks effect advantage with ten years of inexplicably idiotic product decisions, rebranding, failure to adequately replace deprecated products, etc. I actually generally consider them to have the absolute best products in terms of feature quality, far more often than not; Yet at this point, I can't imagine why anyone would see a Google product that relies on network effects at all and not run as far away as fast as possible.
I'm semi-actively looking for alternatives to Skype and hadn't heard of Duo.
I've an Android phone, they jam in so much junk I don't need, surprised not have had a notification of a Google communication app.
Personally I feel the space needs to be democratised badly. We need some way to take control of contacts lists so they can be locally (to the user) synced outside of any app and have a protocol like XMPP that's common across carriers so that [video] chat clients become like PSTN telephones.
Edit: Source for my beliefs on the above: http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategie...
Edit 2: removed Facebook as an offender. It was just Microsoft that was not sharing.
So that’s definitely a wrong statement.
They never supported federation.
Which in turn allowed you to use XMPP bridges, that pretended to be an XMPP client on one server, but were federated to another server.
That's a lame excuse that Eric Schmidt produced for abandoning XMPP. The irony is, he should be blamed for the same thing he blamed others for.
With Siri you can actually mix languages. So you can ask in French about an English film title. I don't know how good Alexa is about these kinds of things. Considering that it's only for the US, I can't know.
I don't know if Google Photos is running circles around Photos. I know a new version just came out with macOS Sierra. I just read an article today over on Six Colours that praised its search capabilities. I don't use Google Photos or Apple's. I haven't had a camera in years and only got my first cell phone this year (I was given an iPhone 5).
I completely rule Alexa out from these kinds of discussions until Amazon bothers to sell it elsewhere. It's been a consistent issue with Amazon. It took several years before we got the Kindle in Canada, we were promised Amazon's MP3 store, but we're still waiting. Our Amazon Prime only covers shipping, not any of the books or video.
Siri does what I need it to do on my phone, but I don't really ask for much. I mainly use it for timers and creating appointments. Those have all worked perfectly, even when I'm standing right next to my kitchen fan or the speakers of my stereo.
As for Google Photos, it makes mistakes, false positives mostly (as a funny example, for my photos so far it consistently thinks cats are dogs, although it also recognizes the same cats correctly) and sometimes it's too “eager” (“cars” will produce results where cars should be but are not actually in the photo). Sometimes it makes bizarrely trivial mistakes considering how smart it is generally: it categorized photos of human cadavers and anatomy specimens I made at the local university institute of anatomy as “Christmas”, I guess because they were made on Christmas day. But it will correctly find true positives. It also correctly visually recognizes notable places globally (that is, without geotags) and various things, concepts etc. even if they're a completely marginal subject in a photo. One thing that impressed me was a cat video it edited out of multiple clips with almost perfect music some 5-10 minutes after I uploaded the first items and started using it.
The post about Apple's Photos I found linked on Six Colours, but it's on Macworld [1]. In it, he searches for a zebra and it gave his few photos that he took of zebras at the zoo. So, that worked well, but the search for dogs made the same mistake as you state Google Photos made (cats mistaken for dogs). So, I think that Apple's Photos is probably somewhat close to Google Photos, but maybe not quite as good. It's not exactly Google running circles around it.
[1] http://www.macworld.com/article/3122966/macs/6-photos-featur...
why not just use one of the many other apps that does provide end-to-end encryption, if it's something you want? Some feature sets are simply not compatible. If people keep insisting on end-to-end, google will implement it and then scan all your replies on either end and send them to their servers after the end instead of intercepting them, so they can tick off the E2E box. It's better for everybody's privacy to simply accept that some apps aren't private than trying to shoehorn privacy into apps that are antithetical to it.
It is just a definition of what "end" means. The phone? The app? The screen? Your eyes? With real end-to-end encryption nobody should be able to read over your shoulder and it should be delivered directly to your retina.
Note that such an assistant can itself be connected to the internet again.
Personally I'm not against a setup like this. I have encrypted communication through corporate servers, but would like to open up my end to this or other parties.
Edit: I didn't mean you didn't say this already, just wanted to explore the point you already made.
They could totally have made assistant run locally, but it's easier for them to run it on a server:
- It saves battery to run big computations on something that does not run on a battery (their servers);
- They can use techniques that require more processing power;
- They can patch whenever and whatever they want, since it's all on-premises for them; and
- And as a bonus, you know what people are interested in and talking about.
Most privacy minded people probably wouldn't install it anyway, it being closed source and by Google, so the few that you send away by this is a small number. And it adds network dependency and latency, but it's a messaging app - you need network connectivity anyway.
So I can totally see why they do it. I can also tell I'm never going to install this Google-run assistant and why I'm going to tell everyone to stay away.
> All I see is a tool to make me the product.
I think you're right, and you're not paranoid at all.
I'm now using only open source tools both on PC and on Android (courtesy of F-Droid), switched from Gmail to Mailbox.org and from Chrome to Firefox with all privacy settings turned on (no tracking, no long term cookies etc.), switched from GDrive and Dropbox to my own private cloud solution (using a NAS + Owncloud), started using PGP for email, and currently trying to get my friends to use Signal for instant messaging.
First world problems? Maybe, but I don't like to be sold in exchange for free-of-charge services.
Switched from Chrome to Firefox as well. I switched to Microsoft cloud products ( Office, 'SkyDrive' or whatever it's called now ) to get away from Google, or at least from having so many eggs in the Google basket.
I don't like being sold either. It makes me feel like a slave.
- In real life you have no privacy, but still you don't think about it (white pages, community hall inscriptions, driving license, medical history, ...), apart of white pages try to unsubscribe from any of them and see what happens. Internet made it just easier to track you.
- your safety is based on 2 things your habits and the peers that know you and are willing to lend a hand (family, neighbors, friends ...)
- what makes me feel secure about Google tools, is his business model, if they have a breach and expose people's data, they simply bankrupt, so their business relays heavily in security. (as soon as you enable 2 time factor, it becomes incredible difficult to hack you)
- what I don't like of them, they are in EEUU soil and I'm European, so I don't know if I could eventually get into trouble (like is happening in Facebook, they simply don't listen to European cases about cyberbulling, something I didn't read yet from Google, maybe because they are not so popular, maybe because they are truly Not Evil).
- so yes, I'm a product, and it also unlocks me to easily backup and access my family photos, that I can share via chromecast, or get my mails free from non nice spam and eventually find nice new products and know that I can click without exposing myself too much.
- I do have kids, and what comforts me, I can delegate to Google the block of certain images/sites thanks to their advance AI, still is not perfect so by the time they start, I'll also keep an eye. It is different to explain something bad that he just accidentally found, that place them out of his way until he has the age to understand it.
- and don't get started with the zero days exploits, the wrong architecture of some open source apps, and even the abandonware you have out there for free.
At the end, you need to trade something because one person alone can't get everything, and trust between peers is essential. And money made that trust easy, don't trust people, trust that they want the money :)
The databases you mention have serious judicial requirements (in EU) and no free access by a company. Leaks of course happen, but they are treated seriously and are news items.
If Google had a breach, they'd do the same as everyone: cover it up or PR it down and fix it. They won't go bankrupt over even a string of break-ins.
There is less reason to trust them as they are an American company. In fact NSA had free reign over their data at some time and they didn't know about it.
While I would trust them much more than a random startup, trusting their database handling is different. Local, non collated data is often safest. Plus you're not a big target as a single person most of the time.
I might got wrong the reasons why Google is secure, but I found it convincing
so yes, I'm a product, and it also unlocks me to easily backup and access my family photos, that I can share via chromecast, or get my mails free from non nice spam and eventually find nice new products and know that I can click without exposing myself too much. With all their services google gets to know most of your thoughts. You don't care. It's okay, I don't blame you. But please do not tell others "there is no privacy" just because you threw yours away for some services that make your life a bit more comfortable.
maybe because they are truly Not Evil
'You have to fight for your privacy or you will lose it' - Eric Schmidt. We (meaning mostly you) lost it a long time ago already. They sometimes show their evil face - you just don't remember/know/care.
delegate to Google the block of certain images/sites thanks to their advance AI This is kinda 1984 7.0 - just wait for them enabling it for everyone. Page ranks can/could decide elections already - do you really want them having so much power over everyone? Just because their search results are a bit better (read: personalised) than duckduckgo/etc. ? I sometimes really understand the need for russian/chinese firewalls. Even Canada (reminder: member of the 5 eyes) refuses to send their country-internal internet traffic through the USA even it would be cheaper and faster at the same time. It's forbidden by law.
At the end, you need to trade something because one person alone can't get everything, and trust between peers is essential. And money made that trust easy, don't trust people, trust that they want the money :) In my eyes, you trade away far more than they give you.
Your second point is quite vast to reply here, but one example: think one second of a daughter that she wants to find her favorite princess in the internet without filter you find quite some porn actress with those names, and because are popular ... paaaam first place. Now how I explain to an infant what those girls are doing, wouldn't be easier to wait until she gets the maturity and I can explain better?
The last point, is my opinion nothing more. Is always a trade, it depends how much you will trade.
I wouldn't disagree with a statement that Google pays a lot of attention to security, but I doubt it would go bankrupt if there were a breach. There are many big companies that have suffered data breaches but haven't gone bankrupt yet. They just move on with some impact and/or some compensation to their customers, like identity theft protection. <insert any "free+you're the product" quotes here>
Tired of feeling like a product.
I'm pretty much done with Google IM products. I have a few contacts that will keep using hangouts, but for the rest I either have them on Facebook or iMessage.
It honestly doesn't seem like a bad attempt. Totally would have preferred it in Hangouts, though, I'll probably drop Google IM altogether if Hangouts/XMPP C2S is not supported.
Speaking for myself, I've found Hangouts to be a noticeable drain on my battery (iOS), while WhatsApp seems negligible.
I'm also on a smaller screen iPhone, and with the icon bar and the timestamp placement in Hangouts, I can read far fewer messages on the screen at the same time than with WhatsApp.
Personal preference, but I also like that WhatsApp uses the iOS emoji across platforms, so I know what emoji my recipient is getting – when I use an emoji in Hangouts, they get replaced by a Google emoji, and I never know what it's going to look like until I've already sent the message.
Finally, Hangouts doesn't use end-to-end encryption, which personally makes me feel very uncomfortable (I also didn't like using WhatsApp for a long time for the same reason).
This is anecdotal, but to me it's more than WhatsApp just being entrenched – in many ways, they really do have the better product.
On a side note, I notice that Google's new services coming out only require a phone number, which I think will help them a lot.
[1] https://wire.com/
It has fallback to SMS functionality[1], but SMS apps are rejected from the Apple App store [2].
[1] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/google-allo-smarter-...
[2] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
> Apps that enable anonymous or prank phone calls or SMS/MMS messaging will be rejected.
I read that as anonymous or prank SMS/MMS, not just any SMS/MMS.
Which guideline are you thinking of? My search for "SMS" only found two unrelated guidelines:
> 1.1.6 False information and features, including inaccurate device data or trick/joke functionality, such as fake location trackers. Stating that the app is “for entertainment purposes” won’t overcome this guideline. Apps that enable anonymous or prank phone calls or SMS/MMS messaging will be rejected.
> 3.2.2 (iv) Collecting funds within the app for charities and fundraisers. Apps that seek to raise money for such causes must be free on the App Store and may only collect funds outside of the app, such as via Safari or SMS.
Respond to a message without downloading Allo When you receive a message from an Allo user, you have a few options:
Reply with a text message to continue chatting with the Allo user. To stop receiving messages from Allo users, text "STOP."
https://twitter.com/search?q=green%20bubble%20text&src=typd
[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgf... [1] https://gist.github.com/ryan-allen/fd45c6f7396fffe28b6b3b517...
They're making a reentry into a very populated space. Facebook messenger, whatsapp, Skype, iMessage... why would you risk the scenario where someone finds this blog post in a newsfeed, looks at the app, finds it unavailable, and never returns?
It just doesn't make any sense to me. Clearly they're going to launch sometime in the next 12 hours. So the infrastructure is all in place and the final builds are made. Why not wait on the press release until it's actually available?
But Google Allo doesn't do any phone call, I think it will confuse users.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/All%C3%B4
I remember hearing about Amazon pre-emptively shipping goods to warehouses based on expected demand. If algorithms can anticipate our responses and our shopping, what will be left in the end?
Google tries to exactly forecast what you will want to respond to a picture, which sounds a lot harder.
Beside the limbo that this leaves Hangouts in, Allo and Duo have no web/desktop client, which is where I do 90% of my messaging. I've made too many excuses and put up with half-assed experiences for the past 5-10 years. Unfortunately, my options are probably Facebook messaging or raw SMS.
Meanwhile Riot/Matrix have all of the functionality of Slack/Skype/Hangouts/etc, is open source, is federated, etc... and no one seems to care...
(Not to mention that I still can't even download Allo if I try...)
I wonder if they are doing this because they expect issues or if they expect everyone to want the app. Personally, I just wish the stock Android messenger could communicate better with imessage group chats.