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Comment by pedalpete

13 hours ago

How google hasn't been able to do this with messenger is beyond me.

The external partners on our slack are almost all logged in via gmail or other google workspace. We are on google workspace as well.

If you are on Google Workspace, just use chat.google.com: it's not bad. All it takes is just a benevolent dictator (or more realistically a bean counter) at work saying they don't want the company to pay for Slack in addition to Google Workspace.

Google decided to build a new chat app every two years instead of keeping the good bits of the original chat app they had and evolving it. It was endlessly frustrating to me when I was at Google. Google's security team ended up banning Slack access after several teams started expensing it.

It doesn't seem like building something that works well would be that hard; we've had nearly 40 years to learn from IRC, AIM, and others. Why can't I run my own chat client that does what I want? Oh, because you gotta lock people in. Sucks.

  • It is impossible to believe the self-own on Google's messaging platforms. At one point, it seemed that all of my acquaintances used Google Talk. Then years of shutting down perfectly working applications, sometimes without any real user porting. There were even identically named products existing at the same time.

    However, I am sure a few Googlers got some tasty promotions out of the mess, so it was all worth poisoning the well.