Hangouts once upon a time was an effective iMessage alternative and Google totally squandered what they had. Several years back the Android version of hangouts

Hangouts once upon a time was an effective iMessage alternative and Google totally squandered what they had. Several years back the Android version of hangouts: * could message over hangouts, google voice and sms/mms * could merge those methods into a thread by person * was a required vendor pre-install app, if you knew someone’s gmail address and they had android you could reliably send a hangouts message * it was easy to video call people because most people had hangouts installed Sure it wasn’t as user friendly as iMessage and FaceTime but the base was there and the ui could have improved to get there.