According to different sources, Google is in talks to participate in a fundraising round in messaging startup Symphony Communication Services LLC. The service is currently backed by some Wall Street banks.
Symphony which just launched three weeks ago, offers secure, cloud-based, communication and content sharing on Windows an inside a web-browser. The company is also planning to release apps for Mac, iOS and Android in the near future.
Symphony is free for individuals and small teams. For teams of a minimum of 50 users it costs $15 per user per month. For larger teams, there is also an Enterprise version.
Originally built as an internal messaging system for Goldman Sachs with the name Live Current, it evolved into a publicly available messaging solution with advanced features you will not find on WhatApp, Skype or other services.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JLGOQbF32Y
Here a feature summary for the different aspects of the Symphony which is written in Javascript and Java. As you can see, Symphony, which is not very popular at this stage, offers a really advanced feature set which could integrate perfectly into Google´s own messaging solutions.
Conversations
| 1 to 1 chat | Chat with individuals. |
| Multi-chat | Add additional people to a chat. |
| Public rooms | Create chat rooms available to everyone on your pod. |
| Private rooms | Create chat rooms and restrict access to named participants, allow others to add people. |
| Blast message | Post messages to individuals, groups and rooms in one go. |
| Message read status | Track when a message was delivered and when it was read. |
| Block posting by Room | Avoid unintended mistypes. |
| Request join | Ask to be added to a private room. |
| Block content copy | Prevent users from copying room content into the computer's clipboard. |
| Block display in search results | Prevents the room from appearing in search results. |
| Allow members to add others | Lets any member add other users. |
| Share ownership | Allows the organizers to share the role of room owner with other users. |
| Deactivate Room | Owners can deactive a room in which case members will no longer have access to the content. |
| Add Groups to rooms | Speed up creating rooms by adding all the members of previously existing rooms. |
| Read Only Room | Only the room owner can post content to the room. |
| Send picture | Post a picture into a conversation. |
| Picture preview | Available on Mobile iOS client. |
Rich Content
| Send video | Post a video into a conversation – Mobile only. |
| File attachments | Add a file as an attachment to a conversation. |
| Send emoticons | Use the emoticon picker or shortcut keys to include emoji. |
| Add tables | Copy and paste from a spreadsheet into a conversation. |
| Rich Text Editing | Pick formatting from the text entry menu. |
Alerts and Notifications
| Blinking sidebar alerts | Configure how left Nav alerts are displayed. |
| New Message Counter | Display the number of unread IMs, Rooms and Filters. |
| Sound alerts | Activate sound alerts for room creations etc. |
| @mentions | Receive notification each time your name is mentioned. |
Layout options
| Pop-out a conversation | Select pop-out to display a conversation in its own floating window. |
| Multi-Session | Use Symphony on multiple devices or tabs and synchronize notifications and message status. |
| Multiple conversations | Display multiple conversation frames at once. |
| Organize your frames | Drag and drop frames to design the perfect layout for your conversations, searches and filters. |
| Assign colors | Assign colors to specific individuals to highlight their posts more easily. |
| Font size | Display with small, medium or large fonts. |
| Background themes | Use dark or light background themes. |
| Pin conversations | Pin regular conversations to create customized conversations and information portals. |
| Collapse and expand | Click on dates to reduce the amount of content displayed in each conversation. |
| Create Aliases | Personalize the way others are displayed using aliases and colors. |
| Group IMs, Filters and Rooms | Drag and drop items into groups to categorize them. |
Social features
| your wall | Post messages and alert your followers. |
| Suppress a post | Take back a post. |
| Like a post | Add your appreciation to someone's post. |
| Remove a like | Changed your mind? Remove your like. |
| Delegate | Decide who can post on your behalf. |
| Delegated Posting | Post messages on behalf of someone else. |
| Follow colleagues | Follow another user to be notified whenever they post a message. |
| Profile picture | Load the picture others will see when they view your profile or highlight a post. |
| Customize your profile picture | Center your photo. |
| Quick access to any profile | Highlight a profile to immediately chat to another user. |
| Unfollow | Display someone's profile and stop following them. |
Enhanced search
| Global search | Search through all of your content in one go. |
| Advanced search | Search by people, by IMs, by room and by date. |
| Search autocomplete | Start typing and your most recent searches are displayed as a pick list. |
| Encrypted search | Conversation tokens and search terms are encrypted and obfuscated. |
| Apply handles to content | Has#tags, Ca$htags and @mentions let you annotate your content. |
| Filter content | Filter Symphony and external content by user and handles. |
| Channels | Share filters with others. |
| Request to Join Room | Users can request to join private rooms when room is set to searchable. |
| Handles in Room Descriptions | Add handles when creating rooms to make it easier to find content. |
| Autocomplete mentioning | Preceed a person's name with the ‘@' symbol and a pick list will be displayed. |
