Rest of the Day: Google Spaces Is Shutting Down
Google is shutting down an experimental chat application that organized small group messaging around specific topics. It never had much thrust, and with such low usage in Spaces, no one could hear you scream. About this and much more in today’s news.
- Google Spaces was a messaging app of sorts, intersecting with a collaboration tool launched last year for group conversations on specific topics. Starting April 17, Spaces will go into read-only mode, in keeping with Google’s great tradition of apps being launched with perplexity and delayed a year later. [John Kilsin via The Verge ]
- In other news about the Google chat app, Google Allo will soon have a desktop app. Allo is a non-Hangouts chat app that has a powerful assistant and other features like emoji and stickers. It launched on mobile last year, and Nick Fox, vice president of communications at Google, tweeted a screenshot of what looks like the Chrome desktop app:
- But wait, there is more Google news. Their default SMS messaging app is now called Android Messages instead of Messenger. [Android Police]
- Kotaku has owned a Nintendo Switch for about a week. Here are editor-in-chief Steven Totilo’s first impressions of the hardware (great, but the software isn’t ready yet). And here are his impressions of the new game Zelda . They will have a full review next week. Personally, I am already sold; This is possibly the first Nintendo hardware I bought since the GameCube. [Kotaku]
- The iPhone 7 exploded. Apple is looking into this and has also replaced a volatile device owned by an Arizona teenager. [Gizmodo]