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Is Google going to discontinue gtalk?

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
MS will be discontinuing MSN, in fact one of my friends can no longer connect to his account, so I think they're doing it a bit at a time.

Now today on my phone I noticed an update that replaces "Talk" with "circles" which I'm guessing is the G+ service. I never use gtalk on my phone so I don't really care, but does this mean they will be discontinuing the gtalk service as a whole? Seems kinda silly, when people are in the middle of looking for a new IM service because of MS... been telling my friends to add me to gtalk but if they discontinue that too... not sure what else there is. I don't want to use the skype BS, I want to use pidgen and not some bloated MS client.

Time to make my own IM service? LOL.
 
Yeah just noticed Gtalk disappeared today, wasn't a heavy Gtalk user but liked it just fine. Not really into all this circles nonsense.
 
Hangouts replaced "talk" on my device. It requires verifying your phone number via text and your email address before you can use it. So basically all of your info is linked. It's mostly the same layout as talk. It lets you know when and where people viewed your message which I thought was neat, but a little stalkerish. It has more media features too, like adding pictures to messages.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.talk&referrer=utm_source%3Den-ALL-landingpage%26utm_medium%3DCTA%26utm_term%3D%26utm_campaign%3Dlandingpage
 
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GChat still works in Gmail and via other chat clients. It sounds like they just killed the standalone app?
 
I've used it once ever...

I have a Google/gmail account only because I have an Android phone. I've logged into gmail maybe twice ever in four years.

I have unlimited messaging and data so between regular messaging and Yahoo IM I'm covered.
 
Microsoft killed MSN because they bought skype it is rather silly to maintain 2 chat programs.

It seems unlikely that Google would kill gtalk although "rebrandings" are of course possible.
 
If you uninstall Hangout app, you get back the Gtalk app.

Google will probably discontinue Gtalk in the future.
 
Yes, GTalk is getting killed. Furthermore Google is getting rid of XMPP (Jabber) support, so 3rd party clients will not be able to connect to the service unless someone reverse-engineers the new stack.
 
Damn, what's left then, Yahoo? lol. Going to have to check out Jappix, first I hear of that.

Seems so many services nowdays arn't sustainable. Companies are always discontinuing and changing stuff.

Still kinda bumbed about MSN though, I have so many contacts on there. Then again most of them I don't talk to much, so guess it's time to let go. 😛 And no skype is not a viable alternative. Voice/video chat != text chat. Text chat is good when just chilling, not doing much, or if bandwidth is being used up by something so gaming is not an option.
 
I had been using both GTalk and Facebook chat and I find FB to be easiest. Even if you're not FB friends with someone you can still msg with them. The FB Messenger app on android is also pretty good.
 
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Damn, what's left then, Yahoo? lol. Going to have to check out Jappix, first I hear of that.

Seems so many services nowdays arn't sustainable. Companies are always discontinuing and changing stuff.

Still kinda bumbed about MSN though, I have so many contacts on there. Then again most of them I don't talk to much, so guess it's time to let go. 😛 And no skype is not a viable alternative. Voice/video chat != text chat. Text chat is good when just chilling, not doing much, or if bandwidth is being used up by something so gaming is not an option.

Talk isn't gone, Google is simply consolidating it's messaging services under the new Hangouts name.

Skype has IM in addition to voice and video. Basically we are jus seeing old standalone products being replaced by or rolled into more comprehensive messaging apps.
 
Damn, what's left then, Yahoo? lol. Going to have to check out Jappix, first I hear of that.

Seems so many services nowdays arn't sustainable. Companies are always discontinuing and changing stuff.

Still kinda bumbed about MSN though, I have so many contacts on there. Then again most of them I don't talk to much, so guess it's time to let go. 😛 And no skype is not a viable alternative. Voice/video chat != text chat. Text chat is good when just chilling, not doing much, or if bandwidth is being used up by something so gaming is not an option.
Skype will eventually have better IM capabilities. For whatever reason, they decided to kill Messenger before Skype was truly ready. They also bought Lync which I've heard is very good for IMing but is a business product.
 
Just another service Google fooled us into using and rolling it into Google + now.

Gtalk has been around for years. I wouldn't say they've fooled anyone into anything, and since it is a free service they are allowed to do whatever they want with it without our consent if they so desire. it isn't like we're paying for it 😛

As long as it sticks around in the main form I use it as (standalone IM program on my PC) then I'm OK. I have never used it on my phone and never intend to. Seems kinda redundant to have texting and IM going at the same time since they practically do the same darn thing on the phone lol.
 
I had been using both GTalk and Facebook chat and I find FB to be easiest. Even if you're not FB friends with someone you can still msg with them. The FB Messenger app on android is also pretty good.

Actually been using FB a bit too, but it's nice to have everything in Pidgin and available despite if I'm on Facebook.

But yeah if gtalk does stick around then I'll be fine with that since I have it setup in Pidgin.
 
I have never used it on my phone and never intend to. Seems kinda redundant to have texting and IM going at the same time since they practically do the same darn thing on the phone lol.

Unless they don't have a data plan, not sure why people pay for texting when IM is free. I think texting came before these apps could send while the recipient is offline, but they can do that now.
 
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Unless they don't have a data plan, not sure why people pay for texting when IM is free. I think texting came before these apps could send while the recipient is offline, but they can do that now.
Because texting is guaranteed to work. Whereas all the IM networks are disparate.
 
Because texting is guaranteed to work. Whereas all the IM networks are disparate.

Worthwhile? - I refuse to pay these cell phone companies extra money for what has been a widely free service since AOL in the 90s. I guess people see text messaging as that important.

Also, some people block texts too and the sender asks if we received the msg. Ummm... no, we didn't get it. I blocked it because I was getting (aka paying for) fricken advertisements a while back.
 
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Because texting is guaranteed to work. Whereas all the IM networks are disparate.

Texting isn't guaranteed. Your providers makes minimal effort to deliver them. If your phone is off or roaming you may never receive them. MMS has a higher odds to getting through.
 
We use it for inter-office communication. Hope not 🙁

You should setup your own server. It's a mystery to me why people will send business communications through foreign servers. Individuals have the excuse of not having the infrastructure or knowledge to do it themselves, but there's no excuse for a company.
 
You should setup your own server. It's a mystery to me why people will send business communications through foreign servers. Individuals have the excuse of not having the infrastructure or knowledge to do it themselves, but there's no excuse for a company.

Why waste the effort building something when you can use gtalk? If there is nothing confidential like HIPPA / SOX / PCI data being discussed, who really cares that the discussions are running through a foreign server?

And yes we had an internal IM system tied to the phones. The client sucked so everyone kept using googletalk.
 
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