Google Hangouts/GTalk glitch sends chats to wrong recipients(zdnet.com)
zdnet.com
Google Hangouts/GTalk glitch sends chats to wrong recipients
http://www.zdnet.com/google-hangoutsgtalk-glitch-sends-chats-to-wrong-recipients-7000021195/
42 comments
I suppose this is a good time as any to ask fellow HN readers for alternatives. Preferably the ones with extra crypto features added in the wake of the PRISM revelations. What alternative chat clients do you use besides/instead of GTalk?
I am amazed that this hasn't received more attention.
Google Talk glitch sends chats to wrong recipients..
This just happened to me. I recieved messages (in gmail) from a contact that ware meant for his wife.
Be careful! I guess the best course of action is not to use gmail chat until google announces they have fixed the issue.
Be careful! I guess the best course of action is not to use gmail chat until google announces they have fixed the issue.
This tend to happen when your policy is to stop supporting tested, established protocols for chat clients and introducing your own in beta version to the entire planet at once.
No, trust has been broken.
You can't tell me you have confidence that this randomly won't happen again in the future? It's shattered mine.
You can't tell me you have confidence that this randomly won't happen again in the future? It's shattered mine.
Your search for perfect, flawless permanent security will be long, lonely and ultimately fruitless.
Already you've cut yourself off from flying, riding on trains and driving. Nobody can guarantee that deadly accidents will never happen, and indeed they do happen.
Presumably you only eat food your grow yourself. There are regular instances of contamination in the industrial food sector. Not that any guarantees can really be made, but at least contamination will be mostly your own fault.
See where I'm going with this?
Already you've cut yourself off from flying, riding on trains and driving. Nobody can guarantee that deadly accidents will never happen, and indeed they do happen.
Presumably you only eat food your grow yourself. There are regular instances of contamination in the industrial food sector. Not that any guarantees can really be made, but at least contamination will be mostly your own fault.
See where I'm going with this?
I generally agree with this reasoning but this is not "flying", this is "flying with x airlines which dropped a plane once".
There are alternatives and one could choose a statistically safer one. There is obviously no guarantee. However, gtalk now has the highest likelihood of sending your messages to random people. That's a reason to avoid it.
There are alternatives and one could choose a statistically safer one. There is obviously no guarantee. However, gtalk now has the highest likelihood of sending your messages to random people. That's a reason to avoid it.
When considering "passenger miles flown per incident", GTalk (and Google in general) has a security record completely on par with the best airlines.
What about the best chat services? In something like 18 years of chatting on the internet from IRC to ICQ, AIM, Skype, even Facebook messages, I have never seen a message go out to an incorrect recipient that wasn't the fault of my own negligence.
Well, they're also good[1]? British Airways didn't become a better airline when the Air France plane crashed, just like Air France didn't become a worse one.
1: Except, of course, IRC which is a protocol, not a service, and it was never designed to be private, but that's pedantry.
1: Except, of course, IRC which is a protocol, not a service, and it was never designed to be private, but that's pedantry.
I think the overall point here is that the ability for a message addressed to one person to end up on someone else's screen carries some rather unfortunate implications for the internals of the service. Compare with IRC private messages, email, heck even XMPP.
Both IRC and XMPP cheerfully supports group messages?
I know XMPP does because I use that particular function at work daily, and IRC supports person to person PMs.
What I meant though is that the fact that whatever kind of shenanigans they're doing internally has a failure condition that can misroute messages is a bit scary.
What I meant though is that the fact that whatever kind of shenanigans they're doing internally has a failure condition that can misroute messages is a bit scary.
XMPP does via MUC: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html
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Off course. I'll probably never use gmail chat for anything sensetive.
This also just happened to me. Some messages that I send (using the browser) to a friend were received by someone else. A messages intended for my girlfriend was received by a coworker. My Hangouts app (Android) actually showed these messages in the "wrong" conversation.
Good thing I've gotten most of the friends I chat with regularly to switch to OTR-enabled chat clients.
Yeah, can we get OTR in Hangouts already, Google? (no, not that "we're not archiving it - promise!" OTR)
What would be a correct OTR implementation for you? For in-browser chat you'll have to trust them at some point anyway...
Why not with a Browser plugin?
Pidgin already Supports OTR via gtalk. And on Android you can use Gitterbot.
Google should really implement OTR in a Javascript library in the Client Browser. Would that be possible?
Sure, but I like the convenience of web-based no-install gtalk. I think as far as google is concerned convenience beats security.
They "read" your mails, know what you search for and who your friends are. It would seem strange for them to go out of their way to provide truly OTR gtalk. And I'm totally fine with that, there are plenty of alternatives if I ever need encrypted chat.
They "read" your mails, know what you search for and who your friends are. It would seem strange for them to go out of their way to provide truly OTR gtalk. And I'm totally fine with that, there are plenty of alternatives if I ever need encrypted chat.
WebRTC?
Was about to create a thread on /r/netsec and ask what was going on, or if i had gone crazy, after a former colleague of me got everything i wrote to my fiancee.
Pretty horrible bug.
A Norwegian example/proof: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83758451/Screenshot_2013...
Pretty horrible bug.
A Norwegian example/proof: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83758451/Screenshot_2013...
Wow, I've always fully trusted gtalk. Even sent over my SSN and credit card details. Never again.
Well, you shouldn't do that, ever.
That said, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
That said, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
> perfect is the enemy of the good
While I agree with that statement in general, I couldn't quite make out what you meant by it in this context.
Are you saying "good" = "most of the times your Google messages will go to the intended recipients" and "perfect" = "all of the times your messages will go to the intended recipients"?
While I agree with that statement in general, I couldn't quite make out what you meant by it in this context.
Are you saying "good" = "most of the times your Google messages will go to the intended recipients" and "perfect" = "all of the times your messages will go to the intended recipients"?
Good means that GTalk is really, really good. Perfect means that it will never have a bug.
Nobody is talking about that this is some acceptable status quo. It's a bug and it will be fixed. If past performance is considered, it will be fixed fast.
Nobody is talking about that this is some acceptable status quo. It's a bug and it will be fixed. If past performance is considered, it will be fixed fast.
But GTalk isn't 'really, really good' from my perspective/experience.
- Multiple sign-ins cause issues all the time (Gtalk in GMail, GTalk on the phone/tablet is already enough to cause it to go nuts and send messages here or there, seemingly random). It _could_ allow me to specify what I prefer (XMPP should support that), but it doesn't.
- Loses messages all the time (every ~10th message doesn't arrive. My wife and me stopped using it for anything of value because of this)
- Hangout. The "We don't like XMPP anymore, want to force you to use G+ and .. have the most ugly show-me-some-comic-bubbles interface to make the transition extra smooth" app
Actually I wouldn't be surprised if the issue is hangout, not GTalk-the-original-xmpp-thing.
- Multiple sign-ins cause issues all the time (Gtalk in GMail, GTalk on the phone/tablet is already enough to cause it to go nuts and send messages here or there, seemingly random). It _could_ allow me to specify what I prefer (XMPP should support that), but it doesn't.
- Loses messages all the time (every ~10th message doesn't arrive. My wife and me stopped using it for anything of value because of this)
- Hangout. The "We don't like XMPP anymore, want to force you to use G+ and .. have the most ugly show-me-some-comic-bubbles interface to make the transition extra smooth" app
Actually I wouldn't be surprised if the issue is hangout, not GTalk-the-original-xmpp-thing.
Sorry, but I disagree with your choice of adjectives.
You are reducing what happened today to a mere "bug", which is the way Google (or developers) would look at it. Instead, approach it from the user's POV. Having your financial, personal, professional, secret or illegal (yes, I'm sure there will be that too) communications sent to multiple random people is more than just a bug.
I agree GTalk is "really, really good" like you say, but then what happened today also should "never, ever happen".
You are reducing what happened today to a mere "bug", which is the way Google (or developers) would look at it. Instead, approach it from the user's POV. Having your financial, personal, professional, secret or illegal (yes, I'm sure there will be that too) communications sent to multiple random people is more than just a bug.
I agree GTalk is "really, really good" like you say, but then what happened today also should "never, ever happen".
Consider that statistically it can happen to any other messaging service provider. And switching to other instant messaging service won't offer you additional protection due to that the core problem (it is impossible to guarantee zero bugs without huge overheads) is the same for all services.
All bugs are not created equal. Complete privacy violations in the core functionality of the app are unacceptable. They need to be made aware of that. "It was a computer bug" is a poor and intellectually dishonest excuse coming from a company that takes pride in hiring some of the best engineers in the world.
nope. a trusted chat system can have bugs. just not THIS KIND of bug. the architecture should make these kind of bugs non existent. with email you don't see these kind of things happen, with dns lookup you don't see these things happen. WTF is up with google here?
> perfect is the enemy of the good.
Yep, that is what they say. You know what else they say ?
"The enemy of good is good enough"
and also
"A witty saying proves nothing".
Yep, that is what they say. You know what else they say ?
"The enemy of good is good enough"
and also
"A witty saying proves nothing".
You probably should've stopped doing that after the PRISM revelations anyway.
We deserve a public and highly detailed post-mortem.
Do we?
Yes, we do. Especially all those business users who have paid for GApps and have trusted Google with their comms.
In general, we deserve to have more decentralised services that are built on the principle of 'privacy by design', rather than 'trust by design'. Maybe, screw-ups like this can help spur more efforts in that regard.
In general, we deserve to have more decentralised services that are built on the principle of 'privacy by design', rather than 'trust by design'. Maybe, screw-ups like this can help spur more efforts in that regard.
same her..
If a distributed, private by design service happened to be 300% as expensive, will you be willing to pay for it? How about 200%? 120%?
How much are such things worth for paying customers?
How much are such things worth for paying customers?
If you're asking me specifically, then yes I'd be willing to pay for it, preferably as a part of a set of services/tools (that would need to include imap, contact management, calendaring). I'd happily switch away from Google services for that, providing usability isn't hugely compromised [1]. I'm actually working on open-source infrastructure to get us closer to this [2].
If you're making a general point about why people would pay for such things then privacy/security is just one more axis on which to consider purchasing decisions. It's up to the individual/organisation to decide what they really care about when they're choosing between different options. My concern is that there aren't really enough options that do consider the privacy/security aspect as well as the usability, so I see a gap there. I'd be glad to hear others' opinions on this though.
[1] I was already a paying user of MobileMe purely because I wanted auto-syncing of contacts and calendar so that price-point ($99 per year) is clearly one I'm willing to pay for something that works. I paid it grudgingly at first but I did pay (and renew). Whether that's actually a sustainable price-point for the provider is a different question.
[2] http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/
If you're making a general point about why people would pay for such things then privacy/security is just one more axis on which to consider purchasing decisions. It's up to the individual/organisation to decide what they really care about when they're choosing between different options. My concern is that there aren't really enough options that do consider the privacy/security aspect as well as the usability, so I see a gap there. I'd be glad to hear others' opinions on this though.
[1] I was already a paying user of MobileMe purely because I wanted auto-syncing of contacts and calendar so that price-point ($99 per year) is clearly one I'm willing to pay for something that works. I paid it grudgingly at first but I did pay (and renew). Whether that's actually a sustainable price-point for the provider is a different question.
[2] http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/
I agree that paid GApps customers absolutely do, and maybe even a slight refund for the outage they should be taking. But free customers don't. With no payment also comes no expectation of service (outside the Terms of Service, which probably says that this kind of stuff will happen from time to time).
> "But free customers don't."
I respectfully (and strongly) disagree. You're essentially saying that free customers can be completely screwed over and have basically no rights at all (and you seem to be implying that this ok). Legally speaking, maybe Google has absolutely no obligation to say anything (even to it's paying customers), but this isn't about meeting the minimum legal requirements.
On a related note, how many people really have the ability to comprehend the ToS they click on? The reading level of many of those is surprisingly high given the demographics that use the services, so the concept of 'informed consent' is already quite strained imho. Therefore, people fall back on trust and it's probably in the providers interest that they do this (as they can make a ToS that's great for their own needs, while legally providing very little to the user).
I respectfully (and strongly) disagree. You're essentially saying that free customers can be completely screwed over and have basically no rights at all (and you seem to be implying that this ok). Legally speaking, maybe Google has absolutely no obligation to say anything (even to it's paying customers), but this isn't about meeting the minimum legal requirements.
On a related note, how many people really have the ability to comprehend the ToS they click on? The reading level of many of those is surprisingly high given the demographics that use the services, so the concept of 'informed consent' is already quite strained imho. Therefore, people fall back on trust and it's probably in the providers interest that they do this (as they can make a ToS that's great for their own needs, while legally providing very little to the user).
> With no payment also comes no expectation of service
As a general rule, this is not true according to the law. If I feed someone a free meal, and they get food poisoning because I didn't maintain proper hygiene in my kitchen, I am at fault.
As a general rule, this is not true according to the law. If I feed someone a free meal, and they get food poisoning because I didn't maintain proper hygiene in my kitchen, I am at fault.
> In general, we deserve to have more decentralised services that are built on the principle of 'privacy by design', rather than 'trust by design'
What do you mean by this? And how would this prevent a similar bug in the future?
What do you mean by this? And how would this prevent a similar bug in the future?
In a centralized system a central server routes calls and can make mistakes.
In a decentralized system like BitMesasge the likelihood of a misroute is so low that it would take a trillion trillion universes a trillion trillion lifetimes before the chance of it happening once was even remotely likely, given every atom in each universe were sending a message to an other atom each pico-second.
It's just not going to happen.
In a decentralized system like BitMesasge the likelihood of a misroute is so low that it would take a trillion trillion universes a trillion trillion lifetimes before the chance of it happening once was even remotely likely, given every atom in each universe were sending a message to an other atom each pico-second.
It's just not going to happen.
We do, this is a huge violation of the trust people place in google's chat / hangouts. It doesn't matter that many people don't pay for the product, free or not there is an implicit contract between google and its users that things like this should not happen. Moreover, many people have paid subscriptions to google apps and obviously give them money directly.
Further to that, even "free" users make money for Google by reading ads published on their platform.
You don't?
I wonder if Larry Page will have to write an apology letter over this.
Here it is: "Contractors are responsible for this. They are no longer working with us" :-)
http://www.slashgear.com/google-blames-rogue-contractors-for...
http://www.slashgear.com/google-blames-rogue-contractors-for...
Just happening to me, I thought I was going mad.
It happens on regular accounts, not just Business, I've seen it this morning when I got messages intended for somebody else.
I would refrain to send any sensitive information over Google Talk right now.
It happens on regular accounts, not just Business, I've seen it this morning when I got messages intended for somebody else.
I would refrain to send any sensitive information over Google Talk right now.
> "I would refrain to send any sensitive information over Google Talk right now."
Why only "right now"? Why ever send sensitive information over a 3rd party's server. While I believe that Google will find and fix the problem, they probably make little to no claims about the level of security they offer. So using them at all should be a calculated risk.
Why only "right now"? Why ever send sensitive information over a 3rd party's server. While I believe that Google will find and fix the problem, they probably make little to no claims about the level of security they offer. So using them at all should be a calculated risk.
So how else do you send them?
The exclusion of third party servers is meaningless. Any communication over the internet will pass through at least several third party routers, which are by all intents and purposes servers.
What you shouldn't do is transmitting sensitive information without controlling the end-to-end encryption chain. If you do that, you can involve as many third party servers as is convenient.
What you shouldn't do is transmitting sensitive information without controlling the end-to-end encryption chain. If you do that, you can involve as many third party servers as is convenient.
> "What you shouldn't do is transmitting sensitive information without controlling the end-to-end encryption chain."
Actually, this is what I meant and I should have been clearer. Thanks for pointing it out.
Actually, this is what I meant and I should have been clearer. Thanks for pointing it out.
Two days back, the Mute function did not work on Google Hangout. Had to use the mute function on Mac.
Someone's continuous deployment process is about to get mirred in bureaucracy and paperwork
:-)
Releasing is hard to scale up like google have to. How many apps are they releasing to daily...!
It's not technical building blocks (they can all be automated), not even busy work, just complex intertwined dependencies from completely different, often non-electronic, domains.
Hypothetical release co-ordinator speaking: "Did app A release this morning into EMEA prod? Ok that means app B can go but only once the security review team drop their veto. Has release candidate 2 been promoted to the canary environment yet? Remember B's new deployment process is in scope this release, and do not release to the 5 servers in the BCP datacentre today..."
Could you imagine managing the constant evolution of a rules engine to replace a good quality release co-ordinator? I don't think i'd be able to sleep!
As far as i can see, continous deployment doesn't have the general applicability that continuous delivery enjoys.
Releasing is hard to scale up like google have to. How many apps are they releasing to daily...!
It's not technical building blocks (they can all be automated), not even busy work, just complex intertwined dependencies from completely different, often non-electronic, domains.
Hypothetical release co-ordinator speaking: "Did app A release this morning into EMEA prod? Ok that means app B can go but only once the security review team drop their veto. Has release candidate 2 been promoted to the canary environment yet? Remember B's new deployment process is in scope this release, and do not release to the 5 servers in the BCP datacentre today..."
Could you imagine managing the constant evolution of a rules engine to replace a good quality release co-ordinator? I don't think i'd be able to sleep!
As far as i can see, continous deployment doesn't have the general applicability that continuous delivery enjoys.
No, releasing is easy, until your established process get fucked up by an Indian PM asking you to "integrate" features into G+
> No, releasing is easy, until your established process get fucked up by an Indian PM asking you to "integrate" features into G+
Was it his/her race that fucked it up? Would it have been better if Google hired only the finest corn-fed Mid Western white American?
Was it his/her race that fucked it up? Would it have been better if Google hired only the finest corn-fed Mid Western white American?
Here's the status link - http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380220199...
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Suddenly I'm very glad Talk has never been available in my country. After this I doubt they would have any hope of getting it past EU privacy laws anyway.
Edit:
As the people below have pointed out Voice isn't available to me - Talk is.
Edit:
As the people below have pointed out Voice isn't available to me - Talk is.
I find it very strange a simple instant messaging client would not be available in your country. Are you thinking of Google Voice?
You're assuming of course that EU companies have a better privacy track record.
Wait, Talk is country restricted?
Talk is everywhere, OP probably means Voice, which isn't.
I just opened the chat tab and i was shocked to see the conversation i had with my co-founder sent to my college friend. Two more lines from the same conversation was sent to my friend's brother. This is serious.
Sounds like chat roulette on a grand scale!
What if this happened with Gmail ? My bank details and other data getting displayed on someone's Inbox !
EDIT - I don't use gtalk for sending confidential info, so this doesn't affect me, but this could also happen with Gmail that I trust lot of data with (bank, school, government etc)..
EDIT - I don't use gtalk for sending confidential info, so this doesn't affect me, but this could also happen with Gmail that I trust lot of data with (bank, school, government etc)..
This is probably a good reminder that you should never send anything in unencrypted e-mail that you wouldn't be willing to write on a postcard and send via USPS.
I don't understand what your bank details are doing in your mail? Or what do you mean by 'details'?
Tut, always so negative. I told an old friend this morning that I was going to charge the anal probe, of course I meant that remark to my co-founder.
Haven't talked to him in ages, we had a good chat and we're going to meet for a drink at the weekend (sans probe). Cheers Google!
Haven't talked to him in ages, we had a good chat and we're going to meet for a drink at the weekend (sans probe). Cheers Google!
This is irrelevant. Just because you had a positive experience from it doesn't make this bug less serious.
Sheldon? Is that you?
Why so serious ?
Maybe he has a thing for probes?
Same here...
In situations like this I would actually prefer it if the service went offline until fixed.
I've had this happen with facebook chat once maybe two years ago. I wonder if there have been other places where something like this has happened...
Wouldn't a problem like this call for pulling the service off while it's being investigated/fixed?
[deleted]
[deleted]
> At this time Google Talk is not functioning correctly and we are continuing to work to restore full functionality.
This is where you turn it off until you fix it. This isn't a service disruption, this is a service malfunction with far more serious potential consequences than delayed emails, or inability to download an app, or duplicate credit card charges, and you can't fix those consequences after the fact, not even by applying vast amounts of money.
This is where you turn it off until you fix it. This isn't a service disruption, this is a service malfunction with far more serious potential consequences than delayed emails, or inability to download an app, or duplicate credit card charges, and you can't fix those consequences after the fact, not even by applying vast amounts of money.
I think they turned off Hangouts and reverted to old talk. I noticed that messages I've tried to send with Hangouts from G+ web page were not delivered and chats from gtalk dekstop client are saved in gmail as "chat" not "hangout"
Maybe this explains why us people that link our SIP to the PSTN via Googlo Talk haven't been able to do so for the last 18 hours or so? Maybe they are attempting to figure out what they can safely turn off/revert.
Edit: A bit of reading says that this probably is unrelated...
Edit: A bit of reading says that this probably is unrelated...
Time for some Russian roulette: Send offensive messages to random people on your GTalk and see who receives them!
I have experienced this bug for years: everything I send over GTalk goes to the NSA.
[deleted]
[deleted]
Well, now I'm glad I convinced most of my friends to install OTR. I do wish there were an XMPP-supporting instant messaging service with a good mobile app, though. Google Talk has gone to hell after it got turned into Hangouts...
Use straight jabber/xmpp ? Sign up for a jabber.org account (or hell run your own ejabberd). I think there are some decent mobile clients.
Unfortunately, there just cannot be a good mobile client unless it supports push notifications, which requires server support, which XMPP doesn't have. The existing clients need to keep a connection open and take too much battery, sadly...
Just happend to me today.
A coworker was writing to someone else and everything was coming to me as well.
Besides the fact that this is a pretty serious bug, I'm rather underwhelmed by the care Google has been taking of their hangouts product after releasing it last May.
And I'm not even talking about things like online-status 'missing' (it's a design decision on their end), but more the general experience of using hangouts.
As far as I can tell you're still not able to mute the new message sound, without turning off notifications all together (hangouts in Gmail). Chatter picking up in a hangout and you want to mute it for a while? Again, not possible. Turn off all notifications for that hangout and chances are you'll completely forget you were ever part of that conversation (snoozing notifications hangouts-wide makes sure you miss all other personal messages sent to you as well).
Uploading a photo on a slow network is a pretty terrible experience: it'll start telling you the upload has failed and it's retrying (no progress to be seen anywhere). If you delete the message and try again, you'll probably end up with two of the same messages in your conversation, because often it doesn't appear to correctly 'receive' your deletion request either.
When you've received a photo that you need to save to your gallery (maybe you want to zoom-in a little, or share it with someone else?), be prepared to hit that save button for a while until you finally get a confirmation that the photo has actually been saved.
Stuff like this is not a problem when it's your first release, but 4 months on you'd expect a company like Google to be able to iron out quirks like these. But no, we get extra emoji as one of the few updates to the hangouts platform.
[edit: spelling]
And I'm not even talking about things like online-status 'missing' (it's a design decision on their end), but more the general experience of using hangouts.
As far as I can tell you're still not able to mute the new message sound, without turning off notifications all together (hangouts in Gmail). Chatter picking up in a hangout and you want to mute it for a while? Again, not possible. Turn off all notifications for that hangout and chances are you'll completely forget you were ever part of that conversation (snoozing notifications hangouts-wide makes sure you miss all other personal messages sent to you as well).
Uploading a photo on a slow network is a pretty terrible experience: it'll start telling you the upload has failed and it's retrying (no progress to be seen anywhere). If you delete the message and try again, you'll probably end up with two of the same messages in your conversation, because often it doesn't appear to correctly 'receive' your deletion request either.
When you've received a photo that you need to save to your gallery (maybe you want to zoom-in a little, or share it with someone else?), be prepared to hit that save button for a while until you finally get a confirmation that the photo has actually been saved.
Stuff like this is not a problem when it's your first release, but 4 months on you'd expect a company like Google to be able to iron out quirks like these. But no, we get extra emoji as one of the few updates to the hangouts platform.
[edit: spelling]
Also synchronization sucks. I often use it from my desktop only to get "new message" notification on my phone somewhere around 10 minutes in the conversation with some messages from the beginning. It also loses message regularly so I am now used to ask for copy pasting if it's obvious something got lost.
Blatant disregard of things like sorting via status (or displaying that at all) or introducing more of them is another thing.
It looks like some crazy manager designed his evil plan and convinced all his bosses that it's the way to go. The app sucks, everyone I know hates it, they forced feeded it to users with Android update with no way to go back to gtalk.
It's amazing how they completely ignore what people want in the name of some lucid vision of how web talk should be done. Worse yet, they first lured people in by releasing an awesome app (gtalk) killing most of the competition and then changed it to "Google way of doing web" without asking anybody and with competition already (almost) dead. /rant
It's amazing how they completely ignore what people want in the name of some lucid vision of how web talk should be done. Worse yet, they first lured people in by releasing an awesome app (gtalk) killing most of the competition and then changed it to "Google way of doing web" without asking anybody and with competition already (almost) dead. /rant
> Also synchronization sucks. I often use it from my desktop only to get "new message" notification on my phone somewhere around 10 minutes in the conversation with some messages from the beginning
I use it every day and don't think i get anything like this issue (for balance)
I use it every day and don't think i get anything like this issue (for balance)
I've noticed the same thing with Apple's Messages. Sometimes messages arrive on my phone, sometimes on the Messages application on my laptop, sometimes both. Even when a message arrives at both locations, there's often a significant delay between the arrivals.
It's a shame these companies are taking over messaging and neither seems capable of providing a decent user experience.
It's a shame these companies are taking over messaging and neither seems capable of providing a decent user experience.
> Worse yet, they first lured people in by releasing an awesome app (gtalk) killing most of the competition and then changed it to "Google way of doing web" without asking anybody and with competition already (almost) dead.
I believe you could call this "Embrace, extend, extinguish"?
I believe you could call this "Embrace, extend, extinguish"?
Killing the competition? There is lots of healthy competition in the messaging/chat space:
Facebook Chat, WhatsApp, iMessage, SnapChat, Instagram, Skype, etc.
If anything gChat is a struggling platform that didn't make the transition to the mobile era -- that's the entire reason Hangouts exists.
Edited: to use more polite tone.
Facebook Chat, WhatsApp, iMessage, SnapChat, Instagram, Skype, etc.
If anything gChat is a struggling platform that didn't make the transition to the mobile era -- that's the entire reason Hangouts exists.
Edited: to use more polite tone.
It's amazing that on a place like HN it seems like most people just don't get this.
The vast majority of communication happens on products that: 1. Don't even have a desktop component 2. Have no "status" indication (oh noes!!!) 3. Are completely closed ecosystems
And yet you never see posts about how WhatsApp, iMessage, SnapChat, etc are horrible because of the above reasons.
The vast majority of communication happens on products that: 1. Don't even have a desktop component 2. Have no "status" indication (oh noes!!!) 3. Are completely closed ecosystems
And yet you never see posts about how WhatsApp, iMessage, SnapChat, etc are horrible because of the above reasons.
World is a big place and in some areas (like mine) all the services you mentioned aren't popular at all. I doubt 1% of communication happens through them.
People around use gtalk and facebook messanger. They used to use GG (Polish product, some time ago most popular here) and Skype but most of them switched to either gtalk or fb.
Maybe you don't see complaining because services you mentioned didn't come about as replacement for traditional chat clients integrating most important features of those only to get rid of all this in one go once the user base switched.
>It's amazing that on a place like HN it seems like most people just don't get this.
Communication in general, business communication still is very much dominated by desktop software (e.g. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-lync-video-confe...)
Communication in general, business communication still is very much dominated by desktop software (e.g. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-lync-video-confe...)
It's the difference between must have features like the ability to communicate with people you want to talk to and features like desktop/status/etc that are nice to have but not essential. The tech community demands perfection and obsesses over anything/everything while normal people just use what works.
Most of my friends switched to gtalk from our previously most popular messenger (it was gg in Poland). From I see around they also made a dent in Skype usage. as chat client. Maybe it's alrtenative universe but that's how things look from my perspective.
Sorry for the mocking tone -- I edited my original comment. It's easy to forget people are in very different environments and that affects our perspective.
If you're still thinking of gchat as a desktop AOL Instant Messenger replacement then I can see that products that seem to operate that way are disappearing. The way people are using chat products is changing drastically due to mobile. I would say AOL-style chat isn't going away because Google killed the competition -- rather I think demand for those style systems is just dwindling in favor of multi-platform, multi-modality, multi-party chat clients (picture/text/video, desktop/tablet/mobile).
If you're still thinking of gchat as a desktop AOL Instant Messenger replacement then I can see that products that seem to operate that way are disappearing. The way people are using chat products is changing drastically due to mobile. I would say AOL-style chat isn't going away because Google killed the competition -- rather I think demand for those style systems is just dwindling in favor of multi-platform, multi-modality, multi-party chat clients (picture/text/video, desktop/tablet/mobile).
Ha. I can see your environmental bias: AIM? AIM in Europe came late and never really took off. Here the first popular IM was ICQ, then MSN, Yahoo and local projects (c6, gg etc), then Skype, then WhatsApp/FB/Hangouts etc.
I agree that classic desktop IM apps have changed anyway, except in the enterprise world (where MS and IBM still ship horrible, horrible stuff).
I agree that classic desktop IM apps have changed anyway, except in the enterprise world (where MS and IBM still ship horrible, horrible stuff).
Incidentally, while I haven't noticed the sync problem with GTalk, I have noticed it with Facebook Chat.
I've had a conversation on my phone, only to go home and flip on my computer and see those messages finally get sent a good 90 minutes later.
I've had a conversation on my phone, only to go home and flip on my computer and see those messages finally get sent a good 90 minutes later.
Remember, Google services are "eventually consistent." You just haven't waited long enough.
Honestly, I've had the opposite experience. The lack of online status certainly hasn't been missed, as I've been using hangouts to completely replace SMS. It's way more convenient. With the Chrome extension, I have all of my messages without ever having to have a certain website or even Chrome open. Maybe I've gotten really lucky, but I haven't run into any of those other problems. The only feature I'm waiting/hoping for is for it to be seamlessly integrated with SMS.
So say you are a programmer and you have a coding problem. You have some friends which you know could help. You don't want to spam all of them but just ask the one who is available now.
Just one use case for online statuses.
Another one is, you know, you just want to chat with someone to make next 15 minutes pass and for that it would be nice to say "hi" to a person available for a quick chat right now.
It depends on your use case.
Where I work, we use google apps, and so everyone has each other on Gtalk. We use the status line to indicate whether somebody is WFH or OOO, which works great. But with hangouts, I lose that information. Worse yet, it doesn't show my contacts that I don't talk to, which is bad because I care about their online status. Even worse yet, if I "revert to old chat", but reply to somebody using my phone where I don't have that option, that conversation get sucked into the hangout side and I don't get it in my email anymore.
So hangouts is now hiding information I need and unreliable at delivering messages. That makes it worse than useless: If it wasn't there, I would at least use some alternative. It would be better for it not to exist.
Where I work, we use google apps, and so everyone has each other on Gtalk. We use the status line to indicate whether somebody is WFH or OOO, which works great. But with hangouts, I lose that information. Worse yet, it doesn't show my contacts that I don't talk to, which is bad because I care about their online status. Even worse yet, if I "revert to old chat", but reply to somebody using my phone where I don't have that option, that conversation get sucked into the hangout side and I don't get it in my email anymore.
So hangouts is now hiding information I need and unreliable at delivering messages. That makes it worse than useless: If it wasn't there, I would at least use some alternative. It would be better for it not to exist.
That's a really good point. I just use hangouts for personal communication, but as a company chat system it does seem pretty necessary to know someone's status. Hopefully it'll be added soon!
Using gtalk for SMS was so much more convenient, because you could just press the contact icon, and get gtalk as an option.
They've removed this integration in Android, and now you have to go re-find that contact in a separate hangouts app. It's a terrible UI regression.
They've removed this integration in Android, and now you have to go re-find that contact in a separate hangouts app. It's a terrible UI regression.
You're forgetting the worst offender: the old Gchat let you tab through the input boxes of the different chats. On Hangouts, tab just cycles you through every UI element on the page.
Not sure why it isn't documented, but you can cycle through chat windows with Ctrl-. and Ctrl-,
To be fair,that's the proper behavior the tab key on a desktop, and breaking from that is breaking the standard behavior. Offering a hotkey makes sense, but tab isn't it.
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Oh god, the notifications. There doesn't seem to be any intelligent targeting for them. Whenever I receive a message, every single client I have gets notified regardless of what I'm doing. If I'm actively typing into my android hangout client, chances are my tablets and my gmail tabs don't need to beep to let me know there's a new message.
> And I'm not even talking about things like online-status 'missing'
Can someone tell me what the green underline beneath an avatar meant then?
Can someone tell me what the green underline beneath an avatar meant then?
It's binary: you're there or not. You can't be idle or busy anymore, which sucks pretty hard for regular users.
It's more than that: The Android app has no feedback at all. I have no idea even whether you're there or not. It's a complete clusterfuck, and orders of magnitude inferior to the old Google Talk app, which worked fantastically well.
This was literally fixed in the last day. There's now feedback similar to the browser app.
https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13uvbygrw2zyfopw04...
I wonder if the bug is related to these changes.
I wonder if the bug is related to these changes.
Yeah, the lack of status is exactly why no one uses SMS for messaging.
If I didn't want to know if the recipient was currently online and could chat idly, I'd use SMS.
(My brain short-circuited there for a moment when trying to form a reply to a comment that was both extremely sarcastic and ludicrously wrong. Hopefully the above meets all our expectations.)
(My brain short-circuited there for a moment when trying to form a reply to a comment that was both extremely sarcastic and ludicrously wrong. Hopefully the above meets all our expectations.)
Hangouts is realtime and shows "now typing" indicators, which aren't present in SMS.
It's hard to see whether someone left, in which case better asynchronous communication should be used, or whether it's a lull in conversation.
The green underline isn't in the Android app, unfortunately.
Android will be getting an online/offline indicator soon: https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13uvbygrw2zyfopw04...
Only in the new hangout window. Not where it matters most - the list of your active hangouts.
For some time I've pretended that anything I write that should be private (IM, mail, etc.) is actually public. Nowadays it has become so easy for your recipient to transfer a mail to the wrong person. Once I've also been victim of my phone sending texts to the wrong people.
So from now on, just write things you can assume in front of the whole world. Don't write shit about people you don't like. Keep that for face-to-face talk with your friends. Things written last so much longer than things said.
So from now on, just write things you can assume in front of the whole world. Don't write shit about people you don't like. Keep that for face-to-face talk with your friends. Things written last so much longer than things said.
I don't trust hangouts ever since I discovered, by accident, that if you get somebody else's invite you can set their status and messages for the invite in calendar as you want. I reported that to google to which they said it's by design if you're sending out invites to non-google accounts or if invite is received in a non-gmail client. While I understand you can't do it any differently if you want that functionality, but this was on a business account. I'd rather see limited functionality then where you can set status for the invite only in gmail/calendar and if you're non-google account or 3rd party email client you get to only view the invite.
Happened to me this morning. I listened in for a while to my friends chat to his client about a bug, while interfering several times with messages of "wtf" and "what ok?" before realizing the situation and horrified at the prospect of the client receiving my invaluable inputs. Called the guy up in a jiffy and told him about it. It seems that I was just a passive receiver.
For those who don't see why they should route their communication through a company known to partner with the NSA, try one of the server-less/decentralized/encrypted communication platforms like http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
I'm starting to seriously consider moving my teams away from Google; especially for chat.
Hangouts has been a debacle. I'm furious that the upgrade was shoved down our throats (on Android) for a next-gen tool that was as feature incomplete as the first EA Sports' Madden game on a new gaming system.
Hangouts has been a debacle. I'm furious that the upgrade was shoved down our throats (on Android) for a next-gen tool that was as feature incomplete as the first EA Sports' Madden game on a new gaming system.
Contrary to the articles suggestion that this is recent (past day or two), this actually happened to me for the first time back on the 20th of the month. It happened between two non-apps (regular Gmail) accounts.
I mean, I watch what I say online anyway, but I sure wasn't expecting Google to force me to open a dialogue with an ex.
I mean, I watch what I say online anyway, but I sure wasn't expecting Google to force me to open a dialogue with an ex.
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Google has already fixed it within hours http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1380265199...
well, look again.
I'm sending random messages to random people just to see them freaking out. "Oh, this might be the bug they were talking about this morning"
I hope you inform them you were joking. I think it's pretty irresponsible to misrepresent a problem this potentially serious.
Of course, just a good excuse to talk to people I haven't chat for a while. :)
Any idea if this is happening over Jabber clients as well?
Deja vu anyone? http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/05/google-android-sms-bug/
Good going Google.
Good going Google.