That would require someone at Google caring about Android. Apart from the amazing team working to modulate the OS, nobody likes working with Android. Look at 14, it’s a code clean up with one feature stolen from iOS (lock screen customisation) which was much better and more interesting back before Lolipop. No master plan, no building up to something. No wonder they can promise 7 years of support for the Pixel 8, there’s nothing in the pipeline.
But it’s not just Android, Google have reached a point where they don’t know what to do about anything. ChatGPT snuck up on them. Rust has decimated any chance of Kotlin being widely adopted. Europe is getting more aggressive about controlling how they operate. Ad money isn’t bringing in what it once did. Any attempts at trying to corner the cookie market are hated. It why we’re seeing the ad block stuff on YouTube and another round of the Google Graveyard, they be running out of money and have no idea how to bring in new revenue.
There was a protest in Amsterdam today in support of Israel where a woman was quoted as saying “Palestine has unfortunately won the social media war.”
I’m sure its a great comfort to those who have lost loved ones, their children or their whole family in the space of a week that the west are arguing which war crimes of two religious fringes count.
Have a look at Beeper, essentially an app which connects to the web version of Whatsapp, unfortunately does not support calls but for chats and group chats should cover everything.
In terms of a light version, it’s unlikely. They’re playing to their biggest markets of India and Europe, where these features are well used (I’ve seen a lot of statuses used for “Good Morning messages”, and business announcing discounts or news.)
I dislike stories, but I have a very small social circle, none of which think waking up or buying a pretty looking cocktail as an achievement worth sharing publicly.
I doubt that’s actually the reason. This seems to line up with the roll out of end to end encrypted calls through Messenger, at the same time calling is being depreciated on the Facebook Portal device. My guess is either the library is too big or they don’t have the staff working on the Lite projects like they used to. Bulk of the target audience for Messenger Lite would probably be using WhatsApp.
But the team may have been gutted with all the Metaverse obsession followed by the AI obsession.