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back to article Google employs super clever rich people to basically rip off Slack

Google hopes to further invade the worlds of teleconference and business chat with a set of new offerings. The Mountain View ads broker unveiled new hardware and software today that will take on the likes of Slack and Cisco Spark. Dubbed Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat, the services will allow a collection of users – such as a …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Given what a POS Slack is

    Why bother?

    8 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Given what a POS Slack is

      I once used Hangouts as a Google employee and it was a POS too. "Eventually consistent" was the technical way to describe it, where "eventually" was often many hours.

      0 0 Reply
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google's like Little Red Riding Hood

    "All the better to see you with/all the better to hear you with" - modern version: "All the better to intercept you with".

    On the plus side, it saves people leaking company IP. Google will do it for them.

    7 4 Reply
  3. Pat O'Ban

    The snake eating its tail

    Google Ventures is an investor in Slack

    https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/31/slack-confirms-120m-fundraise-led-by-google-ventures-and-kpcb-at-1-12b-valuation/

    and helped them do their design and wrote a very good book about it

    http://www.gv.com/sprint

    2 0 Reply
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pretty good.

    As hangouts in it's current form, is WAY easier to setup and use than any other dumb video conferencing system that's been pushed infront of me. It really does just work, regardless of where you are and what's infront of you.

    6 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pretty good.

      Agree, that is what Google has figured out with Hangouts. What people want is to be able to click a link and boom, you're in a video chat or web conference. No plug-ins or registrations or anything that gets in the way.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pretty good.

        I have just never figured out how everyone else is making such a bad job of this sort of stuff.

        0 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pretty good.

      Not any more. In the dim past SMS and voice calling were in the Google Voice app. Then they got moved to hangouts. Now apparently, I discovered when trying to send a message to a contact, text has moved out of hangouts and is back in the GV app. But don't expect it to notify you when you received a message.

      Outside of search, Google is a dog's dinner of incompetence.

      1 0 Reply
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It is not like Slack came up with some earth shattering advancement. Basically multi user chat, been around for decades, organized around Twitter style channels. Others were bound to add channels to their chat programs.

    4 0 Reply
    1. Orv Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      People just keep re-inventing IRC over and over again.

      1 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Presumably

    They will apply Merkle trees to ensure the verifiability of the Content just like they do to the NHS Health Data.

    Unfortunately to generate and verify the signature tree you need complete access to the entire data set.

    All your data and private secrets are belong to Google [and whoever they choose to share & market the original and derived data to].

    1 3 Reply
  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So

    Skype for business then. Or am I missing something?

    0 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So

      Does it even do persistent chat topics? Used it along with Group Chat and they interrupt each other. Doesn't feel as though we've hardly moved on from MSN chat back in the late 90's

      0 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So

      Except it runs in a browser using webRTC where supported, so no plugins. Have you tried Skype for Business on a Mac?! Good luck even joining a call.

      We tend to use Hangouts in preference to SfB because it's more reliable and just runs in the browser.

      2 1 Reply
  8. HurdImpropriety

    Hippie

    Considering the founder of Slack is a commune-borne hippie and that Slack has a "diverse" work force, that alone should move Slack up the "must have" ladder for all Left-wing wankin' companies.

    1 4 Reply

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