A very brief history of every Google messaging app - What a decade and a half of confusing services can tell us about the future

Over the past 15 years, Google has introduced more than a dozen messaging services spanning text, voice, and video calling. This week, the company’s efforts culminated in the general availability of Google Chat, a combination of Slack / Discord-style rooms with more traditional messaging.

It’s the sort of announcement that might have been expected to bring some consistency to the company’s muddled messenger messaging, but — as is traditional for Google in this area — there’s plenty of confusion to go around.

It got so bad for me that I have abandoned using Google's chat apps a while ago. Personally, I think it's way better to have a known brand name for your service, and you keep iterating and improving updates to that. The way Google (and even Microsoft) has approached messengers and chat apps has just been all over the place, and they don't seem to stick long term with anything. When they do, in the case of Microsoft, look what has happened with Skype. I have close to zero interest in anything new that Google or Microsoft launches. If you want innovation and focus, just think of start-ups like Zoom, WhatsApp (original), Instagram (original), Skype (original P2P version), Android (original).

See A very brief history of every Google messaging app

#technology #google #messaging

A look back at Google’s messaging mess.

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