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It's funny this post is being created now. Google Hangouts was the primary method that my wife and I used to chat. I could talk to my wife while she was at work

It's funny this post is being created now. Google Hangouts was the primary method that my wife and I used to chat. I could talk to my wife while she was at work, even if I had no idea where my phone was. Its shutdown prompted me to look for an alternative. We ended up switching to an XMPP client, and we plan on creating an XMPP server for ourselves on a cloud instance so we know the conversation won't be intercepted by non-state actors. I don't know if it will ever reach the popularity it once had, but XMPP is useful to us at least.

PaulHoule 8y ago
For all of the despair that people are expressing I think quite a few people are going back to Gopher, XMPP and other open and efficient (e.g. not "blockchain") protocols.
- jethro_tell 8y ago
  I run a gopher site/hole. but like, the users for that would be a small percentage even on a site like HN. In the wild, I'm going to guess it hasn't cracked a point. Not exactly a renascence.
- newaccoutnas 8y ago
  Wasn't Gopher fairly un-open model (initially) one of the reasons HTTP/HTML became so much of a thing in the first place?
Leace 8y ago
> We ended up switching to an XMPP client Could you say what clients do you use? > we plan on creating an XMPP server for ourselves This surprisingly took less effort than I anticipated when I set up mine (from this [0] list) and I can see most of this modules were incorporated into "core". There is also ejabberd. [0]: https://serverfault.com/questions/835635/what-prosody-modules-do-i-need-to-support-conversations/835636 https://serverfault.com/questions/835635/what-prosody-module...
- drankula3 8y ago
  > Clients? We use Xabber on our android phones, and I use Pidgin on my laptop. It works well enough, though Xabber is a bit annoying as it leaves a notification on the screen all of the time. Pidgin also doesn't come with OTR natively for some reason. Thanks for the link! I'll definitely look over it again when I finally decide to set a server up.
  - bhhaskin 8y ago
    Checkout conversations[0]. It isn't free, but is way better than Xabber imo. It also does e2e encryption unlike Xabber. [0]: https://conversations.im/ https://conversations.im/
    - pgeorgi 8y ago
      It's free on F-Droid and there are a couple of free forks and rebuilds. It's also available for the Google Play family library (so it's one buy for moderate sized families). However Daniel really took XMPP and ran with it: That XMPP is still feasible is in no small part thanks to him, so if you can spare the money that's a simple way to show appreciation.
anentropic 8y ago
Google 'Hangouts' chat still exists inside Gmail
- JoblessWonder 8y ago
  I'm still able to use it in Pidgin as well.
- anentropic 8y ago
  also the Hangouts Android app is still going
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
Somehow, Pidgin's GTalk integration still works. I have no idea how, considering GTalk was shuttered in 2014 and Google Chat within Gmail sometime in 2017/2018, but Pidgin still works.
voidlogic 8y ago
I still use hangouts on my phone and via https://hangouts.google.com/ https://hangouts.google.com/ everyday.... what am I missing?
- bhhaskin 8y ago
  It is scheduled to be shutdown. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-great-google-hangouts-shutdown-begins-october-2019/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-great-google-han...
  - voidlogic 8y ago
    I wonder how this impact Fi, my understanding is Fi uses hangouts for all the VoIP/Wifi calling. I use Hangouts to handle all my text messages too...
    - bhhaskin 8y ago
      They have been slowly moving thing off hangouts, and I imagine they will just shutdown the IM part of hangouts to start with.
    - khc 8y ago
      you can use hangout for Fi text messaging, but it's not required.
    - rkeene2 8y ago
      I thought Fi and GSuite already didn't get along ?
  - jey 8y ago
    I still don't understand what I'm supposed to use instead, as a consumer. Are Google users just not allowed to IM each other anymore? We have to switch to Google's Slack clone?
    - zamalek 8y ago
bhhaskin 8y ago
I also run a XMPP server for some friends. It works quite well. It's also nice to have my own domain to use.
kvee 8y ago
I think the Google Plus redesign was the beginning of the end. Changing Google Talk into Google Hangouts and trying to be more like Facebook began the process of killing what used to be a great platform. Good piece on that here: https://www.tnhh.net/posts/google-talk.html https://www.tnhh.net/posts/google-talk.html
H1Supreme 8y ago
Hangouts, from what I can understand, is simply being split into Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. Not shutdown. Why split it up? Who knows? But, the current version still works, and Chat should probably meet most people's chat needs (assuming it's not completely gutted).
chrisfinazzo 8y ago
It's funny because the last aggregator I remember (~2011-2012) using was Meebo - whose founders were eventually hired by Google. If there was a service they didn't support I couldn't tell you what it was.
ktosobcy 8y ago
> We ended up switching to an XMPP client, and we plan on creating an XMPP server for ourselves on a cloud instance so we know the conversation won't be intercepted by non-state actors. Why create something from scratch when there are a couple of good and solid implementations Tigase XMPP Server (https://tigase.net https://tigase.net) and OpenFire in Java, ejabberd in Erlang, Prosody in lua…

PaulHoule 8y ago

For all of the despair that people are expressing I think quite a few people are going back to Gopher, XMPP and other open and efficient (e.g. not "blockchain") protocols.

jethro_tell 8y ago
I run a gopher site/hole. but like, the users for that would be a small percentage even on a site like HN. In the wild, I'm going to guess it hasn't cracked a point. Not exactly a renascence.
newaccoutnas 8y ago
Wasn't Gopher fairly un-open model (initially) one of the reasons HTTP/HTML became so much of a thing in the first place?

Leace 8y ago

> We ended up switching to an XMPP client Could you say what clients do you use? > we plan on creating an XMPP server for ourselves This surprisingly took less effort than I anticipated when I set up mine (from this [0] list) and I can see most of this modules were incorporated into "core". There is also ejabberd. [0]: https://serverfault.com/questions/835635/what-prosody-modules-do-i-need-to-support-conversations/835636 https://serverfault.com/questions/835635/what-prosody-module...

drankula3 8y ago
> Clients? We use Xabber on our android phones, and I use Pidgin on my laptop. It works well enough, though Xabber is a bit annoying as it leaves a notification on the screen all of the time. Pidgin also doesn't come with OTR natively for some reason. Thanks for the link! I'll definitely look over it again when I finally decide to set a server up.
- bhhaskin 8y ago
  Checkout conversations[0]. It isn't free, but is way better than Xabber imo. It also does e2e encryption unlike Xabber. [0]: https://conversations.im/ https://conversations.im/
  - pgeorgi 8y ago
    It's free on F-Droid and there are a couple of free forks and rebuilds. It's also available for the Google Play family library (so it's one buy for moderate sized families). However Daniel really took XMPP and ran with it: That XMPP is still feasible is in no small part thanks to him, so if you can spare the money that's a simple way to show appreciation.

anentropic 8y ago

Google 'Hangouts' chat still exists inside Gmail

JoblessWonder 8y ago
I'm still able to use it in Pidgin as well.
anentropic 8y ago
also the Hangouts Android app is still going

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

Somehow, Pidgin's GTalk integration still works. I have no idea how, considering GTalk was shuttered in 2014 and Google Chat within Gmail sometime in 2017/2018, but Pidgin still works.

voidlogic 8y ago

I still use hangouts on my phone and via https://hangouts.google.com/ https://hangouts.google.com/ everyday.... what am I missing?

bhhaskin 8y ago
It is scheduled to be shutdown. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-great-google-hangouts-shutdown-begins-october-2019/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-great-google-han...
- voidlogic 8y ago
  I wonder how this impact Fi, my understanding is Fi uses hangouts for all the VoIP/Wifi calling. I use Hangouts to handle all my text messages too...
  - bhhaskin 8y ago
    They have been slowly moving thing off hangouts, and I imagine they will just shutdown the IM part of hangouts to start with.
  - khc 8y ago
    you can use hangout for Fi text messaging, but it's not required.
  - rkeene2 8y ago
    I thought Fi and GSuite already didn't get along ?
- jey 8y ago
  I still don't understand what I'm supposed to use instead, as a consumer. Are Google users just not allowed to IM each other anymore? We have to switch to Google's Slack clone?
  - zamalek 8y ago

bhhaskin 8y ago

I also run a XMPP server for some friends. It works quite well. It's also nice to have my own domain to use.

kvee 8y ago

I think the Google Plus redesign was the beginning of the end. Changing Google Talk into Google Hangouts and trying to be more like Facebook began the process of killing what used to be a great platform. Good piece on that here: https://www.tnhh.net/posts/google-talk.html https://www.tnhh.net/posts/google-talk.html

H1Supreme 8y ago

Hangouts, from what I can understand, is simply being split into Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. Not shutdown. Why split it up? Who knows? But, the current version still works, and Chat should probably meet most people's chat needs (assuming it's not completely gutted).

chrisfinazzo 8y ago

It's funny because the last aggregator I remember (~2011-2012) using was Meebo - whose founders were eventually hired by Google. If there was a service they didn't support I couldn't tell you what it was.

ktosobcy 8y ago

> We ended up switching to an XMPP client, and we plan on creating an XMPP server for ourselves on a cloud instance so we know the conversation won't be intercepted by non-state actors. Why create something from scratch when there are a couple of good and solid implementations Tigase XMPP Server (https://tigase.net https://tigase.net) and OpenFire in Java, ejabberd in Erlang, Prosody in lua…