[czhu12]

Google should build slack. Its a travesty how incredibly good their google workspace suite of tools is, and then google chat is what sits between it all. If it wasn't for the fact that google bungled an internal communication tool so badly, slack wouldn't even have to exist.

For the life of me I cannot understand why they after a decade, has let slack and teams become basically a duopoly in this space.

Source: I use google chat everyday, so its not just a "UI looks ugly thing". Literally nothing you think should work works. Ex: inviting outside collaborators to a shared channel, converting a private DM group into a channel, having public channels for community & private channels for internal work. Goes on and on.

[AceJohnny2]

While the current incarnation of Google Chat has indeed been steadily improving, Google has a lot, and I mean a lot, to make up for:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-... (2021, as the URL says)

And it's not just messaging. Google has a decades-long history of abandoning apps that don't make them billions, which means no-one with memory trusts them. Especially in their current "AI-everything or bust!" incarnation.

[echelon]

I don't think we should cheer on one of the largest companies in the world to build a product to get them even more enterprise stranglehold.

The praise for this monopoly is misdirected. Every single one of you, unless you're a significant GOOG shareholder, should be wanting for antitrust breakup of Google. They're putting pressure on your wages and other investments, and they're contributing to a ceiling for other startups and companies.

Google engineers are brilliant, but the corporation itself needs to be horizontally dismantled into several Googles that all compete with one another. (Not simply a vertical breakup along product lines, but rather the old-school "Ma Bell" style breakup that creates companies that then have to compete on the same offerings.)

A breakup would be good for GOOG investors too, because there's far more value locked up in the company and far too many opportunities left by the wayside.

[codethief]

> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-... (2021, as the URL says)

This article never fails to crack me up! Arstechnica.com at its best.

[flopsamjetsam]

Such a great article. I love a good postmortem. I also had no idea of the chequered history of Google's messaging apps. I'd heard some of the names before, but being an iMessage and WhatsApp user, I'd just stuck with those mostly.

[corry]

"how incredibly good their google workspace suite of tools is" - is that a common sentiment on HN?

To me, Google Sheets is 10% of Excel on desktop (Mac), Slides are 5% of PowerPoint on desktop (Mac), and the integration between the two (copying and pasting linked charts from Excel to Powerpoint with formatting) makes it a completely non-starter to consider the Google alternatives as primary drivers.

I'm probably a power-user of both, granted, but I took for granted Sheets/Slides are still just toys compared to the real stuff, so curious if I'm missing something.

[__float]

I've worked for years at companies that only use Google Sheets.

For 99% of people (sometimes we let Finance folks have an Excel license), it's more than enough. Google Apps Script is also reasonably useful, and the newer Smart Chips are a nice addition.

[plemer]

As you note, most people aren’t power users. That core functionality is enough for 80%+ of users.

Even I, a definite though intermittent power user, am fine with the Google versions most of the time.

Collaboration also just feels faster in Google.

[antonyh]

Competent is not the same as good. I can do the very basic things I need in Sheets, but the moment it needs more than =A1+B2 then it's uphill all the way. I also don't know how performant it is with larger datasets. I use Libre Office instead and despite the horrible UI it's been speedy and accurate. Desktop Excel is still king of the spreadsheets.

As for Slides, it's pure junk compared to the Keynote, but iCloud has it's own problems so I use this offline-only.

With the web version of Word 365 or whatever it's called, we've had so many problems syncing with OneDrive and sharing and whether it's showing the right version of the document that I'd be happy to never see it again, but their foothold in education means I'm forced to deal with it and provide technical support.

[ragall]

Most of the time what you call "the real stuff" is unnecessary.

[xnx]

Excel on Mac is an especially low bar. Last I checked Mac Excel was like 60% of Windows Excel.

[phil21]

I am not a power user of either, and I absolutely detest when someone insists on using Excel. Sharing and collaboration is such a giant pain, and it's like going backwards in time to the 90's with e-mailed versions of files back and forth. Our org does not have a MS 365 license, so I'm unsure of Microsoft's web versions of Excel or how good they happen to be these days. I know users of it who complain though, and end up using it locally on their workstation like the olden days.

Most of my use is incredibly simple and used for project planning, inventory counting, lists of things that are split up into status/to-dos among multiple people, etc.

I've also never had a use for "Advanced" powerpoint, so the simplicity of google slides is a breath of fresh are as I only ever use the 10% most common feature set.

I actually get a bit of anxiety when someone sends me an excel sheet these days. It's usually going to be overly complex using clever methods, and that person is going to be a real pain to work with on iterating anything most of the time.

I've noted some very rare and specific times Excel is warranted though - such as our CFO creating complex financial modeling. For those uses I totally get that Google Sheets would be like working with handcuffs on.

[tomjen3]

I hope I don't suffer from early onset Alzheimer's, but I seem to recall the joke pre the pandemic was that Google would constantly make new chat apps.

Google Dou, Google Chat, Google Wave, Google this, Google that. Seemingly because someone needed a promotion and the way to do that was to create a new chat app or lead the effort for the same.

[guax]

You don't, it was egregious. Don't forget that Gmail chat and google chat were also different and merged but not, I don't even remember very well but it was confusing.

Wave was fine, I liked it for the short time it lived and I am happy that google docs carry some of its collaboration legacy.

[MyelinatedT]

How could you forget YouTube Chat?

[baxtr]

I don’t understand why Gemini is not better integrated into Google Docs.

I can’t transfer results into docs, it can’t manipulate existing docs.

I can’t even rule out that I’m doing something wrong somehow.

But it’s just frustrating to see that the teams inside of Google don’t work well together.

[barbazoo]

Gemini isn’t even an expert in Google’s own products. Ask about a feature from within one of their own products and it’s as dumb as any other LLM.

Why wouldn’t you ground it in knowledge and your product?

[estearum]

I mean Gemini is basically brand new... They're clearly working towards deeper integration.

[ssivark]

Google Chat is definitely a product that could use more love, but it is situated in a specific internal landscape, and grows out of it. Slack is built for a very different context, and I doubt Google would build something like that. Google simply doesn't see the world the way someone who likes Slack would (and I also doubt a large co like Google could operate out of Slack).

[light_hue_1]

> and I also doubt a large co like Google could operate out of Slack

Plenty of corporations much larger than Google operate out of Slack.

[lewisjoe]

Good is really good at engineering great software and really sucks at making them enterprise ready.

It's why they've been failing with GCP, Google Tables (shutdown now I guess), Analytics or any product that aims for enterprise consumption. Note: they are really good at making consumer softwares though (take the success of Google Photos or Gsearch)

[valenterry]

Google isn't even good at engineering great software.

They have some good people working on some good projects. If you look at the relation between software-quality of their average product and number of developers they have... yeah I don't know. Maybe hiring tons of new-grads that are good at leetcode and then forcing them to use golang... is not what actually makes high quality software.

I could believe that they are good at doing research though.

[thebytefairy]

Failing with GCP? GCP has had accelerating growth the past few years, larger than the other two, and widening profit. I've used all three major clouds and overall I would choose GCP, particularly these days for their data/AI stack

[AceJohnny2]

> Good is really good at engineering great software

was

While they sucked at bringing products to market and sustaining them, they indeed used to have a good reputation at software engineering. However they are burning that up in the AI pivot, though it's not yet very visible externally.

[mbreese]

There might be an institutional block in Google due to the way that Google Wave was received. Google has tried (a few times) to get chat to work. It's never quite lived up to expectations (or hype in the case of Wave). Knowing their history, I can see why they'd want to avoid trying to take on that market again. It's difficult to get enough traction with users to make it a successful product.

Not impossible, but it's not like they haven't tried before in the past.

[StopDisinfo910]

Wave's core ideas are at the heart of modern collaborative tools. It's just the UX that was poor. If they stuck at it and refined it, they could be the leader of this segment. Something that I can say for a lot of what Google does. They quit too fast and maybe more importantly they don't use the knowledge they got from their failures to improve.

It's the same with Inbox which remains the best email client I ever used but weirdly Gmail never got the core UX ideas which made it works so well. I would like to say Google doesn't get UX but clearly they have great UX designers on board. It's just that they probably never get final say and are not first class citizen.

For me, it's an issue of discipline. A lot of Google products seems to be built like R&D projects with the mindset which goes with it. They don't have the discipline to do the boring refining work that great UX requires.

[falcor84]

> Google has tried (a few times) to get chat to work

The original gmail-integrated gchat/google-talk first released in 2005 was fabulous. If they had just kept developing it instead of repeatedly creating a new one, they would easily be the undisputed leaders in this space.

[compsciphd]

Google leadership failed in chat because they forgot the most important thing. Metcalf's law. the value of a network is scales to the square of the number of users.

when they wanted to create new chat apps, they had a choice. do we force all of our users to move to the new app or do we figure out a way to bridge the apps. They chose to force users to move.

The problem is, when you force people to move, you also give them the chance to leave and try new things. Instead of figuring out how to make the new chat app more valuable to users it was meant to appeal to by giving them access to google's entire chat userbase without forcing anything on those users, they killed their existing user base on the hope of forcing them to move to the new app. They didn't and now google's an afterthought in the chat space.

They did the same thing with google+ in general. They had a community of committed users sharing data with each other and commenting on stories on google reader. Instead of figuring out how to leverage that user base to contribute "content" to google+ and users that would prefer to use this new interface, and thereby make that new interface more valuable, they killed google reader in an attempt to force those users to migrate to google+. They didn't and went elsewhere.

Google has repeatedly made the mistake of forcing their users to migrate from what they were used to, and every time they do they open the gates for those users to migrate outside of google.

Facebook has learned this lesson relatively well. They don't force users to migrate to Instagram/facebook or whatsapp/messenger. In the Instagram / facebook case they seem to be improving the ability of users to use their Instagram account to add content to facebook (though not in the reverse). While in the whatsapp/messenger case, they haven't forced anyone to migrate, but they also haven't had any interoperability. One would think the apps would have even more value if they could communicate with each other.

[guax]

I remember using google chat prior to slack arrival and it always bothered me that google seemed allergic to letting me organize the freaking contact list.

The insistence on choosing who shows up where by algorithm and "intelligence" made it impossible to create muscle memory, you had to look and/or search every time.

[darkwater]

But hey Google is (was?) a search engine! The best search engine! Obviously the primare UX must always involve searching!

[rimbo789]

I have never understood the dislike for Google chat. I’ve been using it since it first came out even for friends and it’s everything I want in a chat.

[LtWorf]

I think people don't use it because google will get rid of it at some point, without warning.

[uptownfunk]

Totally it is the biggest missing piece of their ecosystem and would complete their offering so nicely. Get a pm and 3 engineers and vibe it out

[overfeed]

> Get a pm and 3 engineers and vibe it out

Google has been stuck in exactly this loop for over a decade without going all-in on a single application. They seem to launch a new chat app every couple of years with not quite as many features as the prior chat application, and slowly add features until it's time for it to be replaced by newer one still.

[EGreg]

Wait

What exactly does Slack do that other chats don’t?

If you had to boil it down to 10 main features what is the point of this? Realtime chat seems to me to be distracting, and I much prefer threaded forums and issue trackers. But I’m willing to listen.

[kingkongjaffa]

Google has good technology, but is fundamentally bad at product design, UX, CX, product management, and product marketing.

[bastawhiz]

Google Wave was very Slack-coded long before Slack existed. I think they feel the pain of getting that wrong so deeply that they'll never try it again.

[mjevans]

It's been too long so I only vaguely remember Wave.

It was a little too early to market. Common PCs weren't quite good enough, and common Internet was very not good enough.

The UI also didn't quite help shape normal user workflows enough so it was hard for an average user to just pick it up and be productive.

---

I think I'd like to see some merger of 'checklists', 'events' (calendar / etc), and 'conversations' much more like Slack channels where each new topic is a thread / email chain.

[matchagaucho]

Launch an internal hackathon. Everyone must use the latest Gemini coding models. Vote for the top 5 Chat/Productivity tools.

Eventually the culture will come around to: a) build new sh-- quickly with AI b) build a new productivity stack

[PunchyHamster]

They did. You can find few attempts here https://killedbygoogle.com/

Google tried to build chat/video conferencing software like 5 times now. Some of attempts were even decent. They just decided that because they instantly didn't win 100% of the market they need to close it.

> For the life of me I cannot understand why they after a decade, has let slack and teams become basically a duopoly in this space.

The only reason Teams is even in the running is it's because it is (was) added for free to the O365 suite so many execs just went "well, since we already have it..."

As a piece of software for voice chats it's okay but as piece of software for text chats it is absolutely atrocious piece of shit that learned zero lessons from anything else and refused to fix anything users actually want

[delduca]

They have built Slack, it was called Google Wave.

[servercobra]

"Remind me about this" creates a public task in the channel!?!? "Hey everyone! I'm choosing not to respond to this right now but don't want to forget!"

We're migrating off Slack because they jacked our prices by 40% this year. Our team used Google Chat for one week and revolted.

[ggoogoo]

Hangout was perfect. And they killed it.

[otikik]

Haven't they built like, 5 different versions of chat at this point?