> They had an established userbase, a name, a brand While I agree with first two, Hangouts was a terrible brand with a bad rep on UX (too slow on Android, com

> They had an established userbase, a name, a brand While I agree with first two, Hangouts was a terrible brand with a bad rep on UX (too slow on Android, complex UI etc), it was kind of like Google's Internet Explorer. They had to get rid of the brand for consumers at least especially younger ones that are the prime target (the Snapchat generation if I may say). I agree though that Hangouts has a better reputation with the corporate world even though Slack is kind of eating their lunch minus the video part where they're still king I think.