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Comment by uptownfunk

8 days ago

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

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uptownfunk

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overfeed  8 days ago

> 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.

  • surajrmal  7 days ago

    The current chat app is decidedly the victor. It's been around since 2021 and there is no sign of a replacement. Google messages remains separate for person chat, but arguably texting and work chats occupy different spaces, just as Whatsapp and Slack do. Folks joke about chat features also making their way into YouTube and Google Photos, but the fact they are not forcing you into the other chat ecosystems is something a lot of users strongly prefer. The 2010s was definitely an awkward period for Google but arguably that was just watching them fumble through social via Google+ and everything else was a reaction to that. 2020s has been a lot more focused with strategy actually focusing on existing products instead of spinning up new ones (outside of AI)

EGreg  8 days ago

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.

  • haute_cuisine  8 days ago

    It's most likely already installed when you send an invite to someone and they already used to how it works. It just works most of the time, well, besides slightly buggy text editor and almost non-working calls.

    • EGreg  8 days ago

      But so what, browsers are installed too and can load arbitrary websites. Which can implement all that stuff too. And threaded forums like Discourse are far better.