this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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[–] cerement@slrpnk.net 84 points 1 year ago (2 children)

not like Google has already tried and abandoned several instant messaging options over the years or anything …

[–] Sabata11792@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At this point they could pay me per message and I wouldn't use it. I'm not goign to convince people to move just to be rug pulled again.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Move to an open, safe, user-respecting option like signal. Fuck using Google stuff for more than just this reason.

[–] Telodzrum@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Instant Messaging, in particular, has been a series of failures of both vision and design by Google.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The golden opportunity was when Hangouts was the default SMS app on Android. The same technique has been very successful for Apple.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I still can't understand why they killed hangouts

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 54 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] evatronic@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago

Seventh time's the charm.

[–] danhab99@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm so confident that Google is just reskinning the same messaging app

[–] ReveredOxygen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

it's not even IM this time, it's just email with a different input

[–] TornadoRex@sh.itjust.works 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes that's what Google needs. Another messenger service.

[–] Z3R0C00l@artemis.camp 43 points 1 year ago (1 children)

2 months later…

This week in technology, Google abandons yet another project. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[–] VerseAndVermin@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

This and many other reasons not to use their products. I think more people would appreciate paying $5 or so a month for email that works without ads or invasions of privacy, in addition to avoiding the constant adjustments to Google-style ****ery.

finallly what google has been missing, an instant messenger application/protocol.

thanks google for really finding a gap and filling a need.

[–] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Google Talk flashbacks anyone?

[–] wabafee@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Another potential to the google graveyard.

[–] rengoku2@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gmail is a part of Google's subscription plan. It won't.

[–] tsonfeir@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago

They don’t even have a desktop app for gmail chat. Whatever they do, they’ll abandon.

[–] anonymous_28@lemmynsfw.com 14 points 1 year ago

No way I'm using a new Google product ever again

[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Just what a successful Google service needs, to be associated with the failure that is their messaging platform attempts.

[–] SquiffSquiff@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a feature available in outlook desktop application at least for Mac

The irony is of course that Gmail did used to be essentially an instant messenger until Google decided in their wisdom that on Android you should not be notified immediately you receive a message

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You can react to emails with emoji right now. At least on Android.

Which at first I thought "thAts fucking dumb"

But now I can react 👍 instead of sending stupid, loathsome 'Thanks!' emails.

[–] johan@feddit.nl 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But what happens if someone sends you an email from a non-gmail account? Can you react then?

If so, does it just reply to this email with an emoji in the body? Cause then you're basically just replying in the exact way as before, google just added a quick-reply button with a predefined body.

I'm personally not a fan of nonstandard functionality for something as ubiquitous as email. Email should be exactly the same regardless of the client that's used.

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

They get an email that says "foggy@gmail reacted to your email with 👍"

[–] vodkasolution@feddit.it 12 points 1 year ago

Will they succeed in making even Gmail fail?
I can already see memes with the Gmail icon and the obvious "task failed successfully"

[–] tslnox@reddthat.com 8 points 1 year ago

XMPP/Jabber says hello. Remember how they used it but didn't want to allow you to use another Jabber client?

[–] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Assuming this is aimed at business use: good, but too little too late.

Tacking on character features isn't going to bring businesses back from Slack and Teams. The ship has sailed. Email exists as a lowest common denominator and a way for lead generators to harass people who don't actually make procurement decisions.

Email won't die but it's on indefinite LTS.

[–] systemglitch@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What do you mean email is on life support?

[–] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I mean that it's no longer actively being improved as a competitor to other forms of communication. Chat has taken over the world in both personal and business settings.

It's not going to die because it's the de facto default when nothing else is available, but it's also not going to rise up and compete with modern chat solutions which are already ten times as feature rich and continuing to evolve.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

hahah thats exactly what this is. they got caught with their pants down on slack and now theyll never get market share.

[–] vinniep@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

The bit that kills me is that “make Google Chat not suck” doesn’t seem to be in the list of options for addressing this problem at all. I work for a company that uses GSuite and chat is universally loathed with a bunch of Slack instances running around the company, both sanctioned and unsanctioned. If they spent time working to improve chat, the momentum of being a GSuite company would carry the rest of the weight here. It doesn’t have to be better than Slack, just closer.

[–] ares35@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

or they're trying to turn (g)mail into a shitty, high-latency, unreliable alternative to imessage.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Still sounds better than iMessage 🤷‍♂️

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

What's the problem with that? You can reply to any mail at your convenient time. It is not a telephone call.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

They won't support markdown for another 10 years and invent their own thing

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Last month the popular webmail app shipped an emoji reactions bar in the mobile app, where a single tap would send a new email with your emoji response.

Now, a wild new UI experiment spotted by Android Police goes another step further: a quick reply bar that looks just like instant messaging input.

Rather than the usual input block you get for writing paragraphs of overly formal text, this new Gmail experiment has a one-line input bar at the bottom for replies.

An "expand" button will presumably launch the usual compose interface.

So far, this seems to be an extremely rare test that only one person has gotten, so it will not necessarily roll out to everyone.

Given the recent emoji launch, though, Gmail certainly seems jealous of its instant-messaging cousins.


The original article contains 171 words, the summary contains 131 words. Saved 23%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] soulfirethewolf@lemdro.id 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The only reason I use Gmail at this point is because it's the only Android email client that has an actually nice, modern looking UI, other apps like K9 mail don't really look as nice as it.

It's annoying how they try to integrate Google chat into the app as well.

I know it might not look very modern but K9 mail is the most clutter free no bs email client I've ever used.

[–] pretelethal@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

anyone remember googles inbox app? now that was basically perfect and had no ads but they killed it

[–] Outsider9042@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

So… deltachat?