Can anyone explain the management at Google and why they continue to produce these products that seem to be copies of copies of programs that have been failures, before they even launch? Is it like an octopus where the 7th tentacle doesn't know what the 1st is doing?
I'm very curious about the decision making process at Google these days.
If the world needs anything, it's one more messaging app. /s
Google is (in)famous for their application process and hiring fairly young people from "top" school. That gets them a lot of brilliant people, but not necessarily good leaders nor energetic followers. The company itself is a comfortable home for some, a stepping stone for others and make more money then they know what to do with. That combined makes the collective fear of failure far greater than the need for success.
I guess the high potential reward outweighs the low chance of success for each individual product. Same reason anyone else makes a messaging app, except that Google has other ways to capitalize on a success than hoping to be bought up.
People are obviously messaging each other, so the demand is proven, and exactly which messaging apps make it big seems to be a bit random, so from that perspective pumping out a lot of them and seeing what sticks is not the worst strategy.
The safe bet is buying whoever comes out on top, but prices are a bit inflated at the moment.
Oh look, Google's 67th messaging app attempt. I'm sure it's going to be a killer this time...
Preset responses, seriously??? bwahahahaha, only a socially challenged googler could've thought of something like this.
I'm guessing that they've got some pretty good experience with the reception the same feature has had on Inbox, where its been around for a while. Just because its not something that seems useful to you (I rarely use it, but it has sometimes been useful for quick and contextually appropriate acknowledgements) doesn't mean it doesn't have value to the broad base of users Google is targeting.
The responses aren't preset, they learn how you respond to certain scenarios. Not everyone is going to have the same choices, it just makes your generic response easier to send.
FYI, they use ANN to understand your messages and only then show choices of quick replies. Think of it as a simplified google search auto complete, which at least personally saves me a ton of time.
I just don't get it anymore. There are two primary modes for chatting, SMS and IM. Integrating with both has its challenges, but it can't be impossible. If someone could just create an app that makes messaging via the two systems seamless, they'd dominate the market.
I use suggested responses on Inbox all the time. People tend to send lots of email that only needs a one line response, and the suggested responses of "Thanks for confirming", "That time works for me", etc. are perfect.
Likewise in social messaging apps there are a lot of "transactional" style conversations where you need to confirm receiving the text message with some expected response. In an instant messaging program these bot suggested responses will work fine for all the one line responses like "cya soon!", "looking forward to it!" , and even "I love you too!"
If anything bot suggested responses mean that the longer form less vanilla text messages you type out are more meaningful. It will encourage people to send stuff that isn't so basic and trivial that a bot can form an adequate response.
The way I see it there are two types of messages to friends and spouse. There is the silly little stuff like "Check out this cute dog!" and if Google suggests "Awwww!" as a response, and that was pretty much what I was going to type out anyway then I'll just hit the "canned reply".
If its a serious message though like someone telling me that their relative is in the hospital I'm probably not going to hit an automatic reply like "Sorry to hear that", I'm going to type out a longer message.
If you're on iOS, you should use Google Hangouts to communicate with people across iOS, Android, and Chrome. But it doesn't integrate with the portable Google Voice number, so you'll also want that app. And now YouTube has been relaunched with native messaging capabilities, so you'll want to install that too to talk with YouTube users. But that won't let you communicate with all the people on Google+, so you'll need to install that too. But of course, you won't get all the latest features for all these messaging apps unless you get the new Allo and Duo, so you should really have all 6. If you're on Android, you can add a 7th with the native SMS app.
Actually, I forgot that you'll also want to talk in small groups about special interests, so you'll need Google Spaces. You really only need 8 apps to message people with Google.
Is this supposed to replace Hangouts or be a Hangouts that's attached to your phone's SMS? Also, where does this mean Voice's SMS capabilities are now canned?
I'm very curious about the decision making process at Google these days.
If the world needs anything, it's one more messaging app. /s