A Google Fi user in Hawaii received a couple of text messages Monday night wishing him a happy Easter. The problem is that these messages were sent on Easter Sunday, but only went through more than a day later.
Google is now notifying Fi users receiving text messages through Hangouts that messages sent to them may have disappeared between March 31st and April 5th. The company said there was a “service outage” affecting “a small number of people.” Google says it has now resolved the issue and is sending the delayed messages. Missing messages should appear in Hangouts by the end of today, April 7th.
Fi users have been able to send and receive calls and messages via Hangouts for years, but Google announced plans many years ago to remove these features as it switched Hangouts to another Google communication app. The features appear to be disabled within the last week.
Delayed messages can cause real problems for senders and recipients. In November 2019, more than 168,000 messages were delivered that were originally sent on Valentine’s Day 2019, nine months earlier. People received confusing, context-free messages – in some cases, messages came from people who had died in the months between. The problem was due to a server error at Syniverse, a company that routes text messages between operators.
Google has been closing Hangouts for years, so it’s possible that not many users were left using the Fi service. Even the Fi user in Hawaii – who, in his entirety, is one of my friends – said they knew they should have switched a while ago and decided not to do so.
“I consciously sit in this place,” said Jason Bennett, who received the delayed Easter messages. The edge. “I wanted to see what happened when it went offline. ”
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