Google Tasks renewal of its personal productivity application that seems to be a lie that arrived in 2018. The development is intimately related to the Gmail redesign that debuts today in Android and iOS and integrates tasks and calendar in the interface of the well-known web email service.
In both cases simplicity is breathed, something that seems to have been forgotten by Google in recent times. In fact, the company takes time to shoot crazy in sectors where it has not just triumphed. For example, in communication and messaging services, where we have 11 different alternatives that confuse and make us dizzy. Google, really, focus …
Too many options
Allo, Chat, Gmail, Google+, Groups, Hangouts, Inbox, Messages, Duo, Project Fi and Voice. These 11 services that are still available today (others like Buzz or Wave disappeared) basically do the same thing : allow us to communicate with each other through platforms such as email, messaging or voice.
Why 11? That would be a good question for Google, which continues without giving the key for example in the field of instant messaging. The appearance in recent times of Google Duo and Google Allo demonstrated the vocation of Google to improve, but again complicated the segment that was already saturated before those launches.
In fact if we have seen something in recent years is that for users the options are not expanded, but are reduced. WhatsApp, WeChat or Facebook Messenger surpass the 1.000 million active users to the month according to the last data, but even fight against the “secondary” ones (QQ Mobile has almost 800 million, little of course secondary in the East) like Skype, Viber, Snapchat, LINE or Telegram seems increasingly complicated for Google.
The company, however, keeps trying. On April 20, 2018 we learned that Google was preparing a new instant messaging application called “Chat” that is based on the RCS (Rich Communication Services) standard.
The idea seems interesting, but that does not prevent that it is probably too late when it arrives. As explained by our colleagues at Engadget Mobile, it has been six years since February 2012 when the telephone operators tried to create an alternative to the then-less-popular SMS. That effort would culminate with the definition of the RCS standard, but the attempts to take advantage of it have been unsuccessful, and that despite being driven by 11 smartphone manufacturers and 55 operators. Google seems to arrive very, very late.
Continue Reading: WhatsApp: 19 tricks and some extra to get the most out of this instant messaging app
With music elsewhere
Google does not seem to care to offer two (or more) alternatives for each thing, and although sometimes that causes two services virtually identical or with the same orientation coexist, in others a product is logically sacrificed to accommodate a new option.
This logical evolution of these services and applications could reach the musical bet of Google. According to sources close to the company, Google is preparing its new music streaming platform, YouTube Remix, which will try to fight against Spotify and Apple Music.
It will do so foreseeable by leaving Google Play Music on the way, which seems he could “die” by the end of the year to make way for YouTube Remix. Some analysts criticize the election of that name, because with YouTube Remix the company confuses us again with the different versions of YouTube : if the predictions are fulfilled we will have the standard service accompanied by YouTube Kids, YouTube Red and now YouTube Remix.
Less is more, Google. Less is more
Google also takes time to offer different alternatives for things as simple (but as complex) as task management. Google Tasks has been integrated into Gmail for some time, but that function is also available in one way or another in Google Keep (theoretically designed for quick notes) or Inbox, that unique web email client that tries to save us work.
What has Google done? Simplify. Or at least you have tried with the new Google Tasks that is available in your app store and that seems to return to the minimalism with which Google conquered many users.
This interface and that reduction of options seems to be also the norm of the new Gmail interface, which has managed to integrate calendar, notes and task lists in the webmail client and has apparently done so exceptionally. No more clicks that open new browser tabs, no more jumps between one and the other to complete one of these actions.
Google Tasks and Gmail may be the first of many steps in that direction. Google needs to focus and simplify an offer that confuses users and makes it harder for any of its alternatives to set. Who covers a lot, you know, little squeeze.
Tags: Google, Google Tasks
Leave a Reply