More reasons to hate Google Hangouts

[swan_tower]

Dear Google,

I’m so glad you decided to link all of my settings to my Google account, rather than to device on which I’m using that account. Because of your decision, I don’t get to say that I would like chat notifications on my tablet, but not on my phone. I either get notifications in both places, or in neither. This is perfect! I get to choose between never seeing chat messages unless I’m on my laptop (where I use Pidgin, a wonderful program that does all the things Hangouts won’t), or having my phone pester me with pinging and buzzing every single time somebody sends me a chat message. Which is fabulous when I’m, y’know, in a public place.

This is such a brilliant move on your part. Even better than that time you decided to take away the nice Talk app and replace it with Hangouts, where I don’t get to see whether somebody’s status is Active or Away or Do Not Disturb. I just love having companies strip away utility and force me into some marketer’s pre-determined idea of how I’m going to use the program, rather than the way I was using the program. You’re doing a bang-up job of understanding your audience; if you didn’t have such a firm grasp of what we wanted, you wouldn’t be so successful at giving us the exact opposite.

No love,
Me

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[mme_hardy]

I also think it is awesome that you have replaced the interoperable Gchat with Hangouts, which requires anybody I talk to to have not just a Gmail account but a Google+ profile. I'm now using Skype to chat with an old friend because she doesn't want to install Google Plus on her tablet, and who can blame her?

And I think it's spiff-a-dee-doo-dah that I now have to agree to let Youtube to retroactively put my real name on all my comments. No, thanks.

[swan_tower]

Oh, that's a lovely added set of bonuses.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

AKA why icedrake still hasn't updated his tablet's Talk app -- and never will.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I avoided it for a long time, but then I accidentally hit "update all" or something, and poof, it was gone.

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

I use Trillian on my phone 90% of the time because of that, as I can see status messages, though I have a grand total of two people I can ping through the hangouts that I can do any time and feel comfortable with not caring if they're there right then or not. Trillian is a lot like Pigdin, I believe. That way you could potentially turn off your Hangouts notifs and use one of those?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Huh -- I didn't know Trillian had a mobile app! I will absolutely check that out. Thanks!

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

It does! I've been using it for years, though I can't say I'm still a huge fan of the way they revamped the layout. However, it works like a dream still. If you pay for the "lifetime membership" or whatever (it's not that expensive), your logs from both computer and mobile will be backed up forever and ever, and you can see your mobile logs on your computer (barring the occasional defect, which I get mainly from dial-up at home).

You're very welcome! When I like something, I tend to rec it, lol

[chinders.livejournal.com]

Yuuuuup.

Believe me. Yup.

(Although, as a small nit, I'm pretty sure it wasn't a marketing decision.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I was thinking marketing because of the speculations I've heard about how they're trying to "position" Hangouts -- but who knows.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I hate the Hangouts change. I don't want my email to look like an iPhone! I want to have text and text and text!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

soooooo. muuuuuuuch. haaaaaaaaaate.

[wolfheart17.livejournal.com]

Let me add my hate to yours, so that at some point the marketing overlords might listen to us. I really wonder who the target audience for some of these changes are, as it never seems to be people I know.