Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped noticed today that Google announced that it will be shuttering its Hello photo sharing and chat application next week. Hello was an instant messenger-like desktop photo sharing application that made it easy to send photos to friends via an encrypted connection. The Hello.com web page has been replaced by a shut down notice and the service will cease to work on May 15th.
"We originally embarked on a mission to make photo sharing easier and more fun with Hello. We plan to keep carrying that torch in new projects to come," wrote the Hello team on their now defunct web site.
Hello, which was part of Google's 2004 acquisition of Picasa, seems to have been neglected in recent years. According to Compete, Hello's traffic has fallen by over 50% year-over-year, and Wikipedia says that Hello shut down its "Bloggerbot IM" service in favor of Picasa's "Blog This" function in 2006.
The Hello team encourages users to use Picasa, Picasa Web Albums, and Google Talk, and it seems likely that redundancy is what killed Hello. Google Talk already has file sharing and Picasa albums are viewable within the chat client (though Google Talk doesn't encrypt files and chats the way Hello did). Could we see tighter integration between Picasa and Google Talk now that Hello is out of the picture? And more importantly, what will Google do with such a cool domain?
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Google Says Goodbye to Hello.
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Google Talk has file-sharing? I use the webmail version; does this only apply to the desktop version?
-JAK
Posted by: Justin Anthony Knapp | May 8, 2008 4:20 PMI'm not all up in everything web, but I'd never even heard of this service and I use a lot of Google products.
I'm not really sure how private/encrypted photo sharing is of much use to anyone though.
Posted by: Anrkist | May 8, 2008 4:29 PM@JAK: To be perfectly honest, I don't use Google Talk (I prefer Yahoo!'s IM), but their about page lists file transfers as a feature of the downloadable version: http://www.google.com/talk/about.html
Posted by: Josh Catone"I'm not really sure how private/encrypted photo sharing is of much use to anyone though."
Are the photos encrypted or is the chat text?
Posted by: Marcus | May 8, 2008 10:26 PMI am really disappointed that this has happened. I am a HUGE Hello fan. My family & I use Hello DAILY!!!!
Now what...........Google chat is shit!
Sandi :)
Posted by: Sandi Garrett | May 9, 2008 1:28 AMSame here -- we're heavy Hello users, and are being left out in the cold. Hello was great fun, you could see which picture the other person was looking at in real-time and chat about them together.
This is why there is absolutely no future in online "web apps" -- if they pull the plug on you, you're shafted.
Posted by: Dan | May 10, 2008 9:29 AMI am stunned. This was one of the best tools on the web. I can't believe it. This is what is wrong with Google... they have so much that they tend to under-develope, under-utilize and under-promote some really great stuff. They have everything in beta forever. (Even Google Talk is still in beta.)
I live across the country from my family and Hello was the best to stay in touch via chat and photos. I use it every single day. This is so sad.
Has anyone heard of a comparable site/tool? (Google Talk is just not going to do it for me.)
Posted by: Carol | May 10, 2008 1:31 PM