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1. Why did they ever call it "Hangouts". 2. Why did they proceed to have half a dozen different messaging services? 3. Why didn't they relentlessly focus on f

1. Why did they ever call it "Hangouts". 2. Why did they proceed to have half a dozen different messaging services? 3. Why didn't they relentlessly focus on feature parity with iMessage in the default Messages app on Android phones? 4. Why didn't they invest heavily in a single unified app that iOS users would be attracted to, just like they're attracted to Maps and Mail? It's really baffling to me how such a smart company has managed to be so dumb.

pjc50 4y ago
Google Hangouts, like all the other google chat apps, was never intended to gain dominance, it was intended to win promotions for those involved.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  I've heard this explanation and I believe it. Nonetheless: Sundar Pichai has been CEO of Google since 2015. One would think that unifying messaging would be a priority from on-high since at least that time. Instead the company allowed poor management to continue, rather than grabbing this issue and saying "stop playing promotion games, this business is strategically important." But it didn't.
  - smt88 4y ago
    Why is chat strategically important? What is Alphabet's strategy? They've only ever made substantial profit from ads, YouTube (which they acquired), and possibly Workspace or Cloud. The last time I looked at their filings, they weren't transparent about which businesses are profitable. This isn't a company that's had a coherent identity or strategy. iMessage is important to Apple because it's an exclusive social network that only Apple devices can access. Slack is important because it's a backbone of a business SaaS ecosystem. But Hangouts was never going to have either of these functions.
    - matthewdgreen 4y ago
      Because protecting their lucrative ads business means preventing a competing hardware/OS company from gaining majority market-share and strangling you with its platform. That's why the very expensive (not profitable) Android project exists in the first place. And when such a competitor gains too much power, your ads business can suffer very real non-theoretical harms [1]. Right now Apple iOS marketshare is increasing: it's reached 60% in the US and an amazing 87% among teenagers! (Who tend to "stick" with a platform even after they become adults.) And while there are many features that are driving the push towards iOS (it's not just messaging!) the dominance of iMessage is definitely one feature people [particularly younger ones] care very much about. And while fixing messaging might not be the only problem here, it's relatively "inexpensive" to run messaging correctly compared to the cost of fixing things after your OS market share crosses a tipping point. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/09/06/apple-crashes-advertising-duopoly-google-and-facebooks-stranglehold-loosening-report-finds/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/09/06/apple-cras...
      - PaulHoule 4y ago
        Android as a zombie OS (not profitable) makes it certain that a quality OS (gets software updates sometimes) competitive with iOS won't emerge. It's really a gift to Apple.
    - agumonkey 4y ago
      chatting on the web improves uses of said web ? and in any case, throwing out 20 services in a row to kill them is certain to damage your brand. there was a time where google was synonimous with free and unavailable features (gmail, gmaps) and now google is that weird ever changing stream of A/B testing customer distracting devices. (youtube just flubbered their UI in the most spectacular manner btw)
    - systemicdanna 4y ago
      You just listed some of the reasons for having a successful messaging app. Why wouldn't any of those reasons be attractive to Google? They could have _finally_ owned a social network. Or a "backbone for a business SaaS ecosystem" tightly integrated into their Cloud services.
- dekhn 4y ago
  Its funny, I was at the TGIF where Hangouts was originally announced, by Chee Chew (who had run messaging at google for a while). Apparently Gchat was not growing while competitors with emojis and other features were. So gchat had to die to make room for hangouts. Many googlers explained taht gchat was not a competitor to those chat systems, but it still lead to the evisceration of classic gchat. Chew got his promo and continued to miss things up for years before finally leaving. The leaders never realyl understood that gchat was for professionals working in gmail, not teenagers in japan.
  - thiht 4y ago
    > TGIF What’s that? Besides « thanks god it’s Friday »?
    - dekhn 4y ago
      Google had a weekly meeting where the executives would explain their latest crazy ideas and accomplishments. It's held on Thursday, because Sundar wanted to make people in Japan happier about attending.
      - mishac 4y ago
        Due to timezones? or is there something in Japanese culture that makes friday meetings disliked?
        dekhn 4y ago
        Yes, they wanted to find a time that worked for the major 3 locations- Asia, EU, and US. If they held it on Friday, that was Saturday in Japan. So it was moved from Friday early evening to Thursday early evening.
  - systemicdanna 4y ago
    I never understood this argument. > Apparently Gchat was not growing while competitors with emojis and other features were. So... add emojis and other features to Gchat, not create a new messaging app. Seems like every time there was a hot new messaging app with a new paradigm/ feature-set, Google's reaction was to build another competitor and sunset its previous efforts, disappointing everyone internally and externally.
elefantastisch 4y ago
Definitely this. I have been an Android user since my first smartphone. I've been a Gmail user much longer than that. I still to this day don't have the slightest idea what the distinction between Hangouts, Chat, and Messages (and whatever else I'm forgetting... Wave?) even is. Sometimes my new phone has an app called Chat, sometimes it's Messages, one time it was Hangouts... they all seem to be the same app to me. So I just use WhatsApp.
- valdiorn 4y ago
  I just checked what my pixel 6 has installed. I have something called "Duo", which, when I click it, shows me something called "Meet". Is it different from the other "meet" on my phone? Seems to be but not sure. Google's communication services are so complex and poorly defined I avoid them like the plague, always have. I just don't understand what app to use and how they all relate.
  - julianlam 4y ago
    Yes. There's Meet, and then there's Meet (original), which is what was formerly called Hangouts... I think. Doesn't matter, I always hit the wrong icon 50% of the time.
    - joecool1029 4y ago
      Meat, Wangouts, Allo, Duo(not duolingo)? Talk, or Chat? I bet they took the team from Microsoft responsible for ramming the Skype/Lync/Communicator/Skype4Business brands into the ground and brought them over. Remember when Groove used to be Sharepoint but now it's a music player from them?
- avisser 4y ago
  You're missing at least Duo & Google Voice (which was embedded into Hangouts, until it wasn't).
  - joecool1029 4y ago
jsnell 4y ago
> 2. Why did they proceed to have half a dozen different messaging services? Because they're different in ways that are not reconcilable into a single service. For example, considered just through an identity lens, you have: Talk, which was a federated service with federated identity. Hangouts which was a centralized service with only Google accounts. And Allo which was centralized service using external identities (phone numbers). You can't do all of those, but need to choose one. And none of them is the obvious single correct choice. (Hangouts and Chat are very similar though. But that was a completely transparent migration too.) Or to put it another way: Why does Apple have both iMessage and Facetime? Because video + voice is different from text. Why does FB have both Messenger and WhatsApp? Because one uses FB accounts, the other uses phone numbers. Why has Microsoft made a dozen different messenger apps? Because what consumers wants is different from what corporations want.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > Talk, which was a federated service with federated identity. Hangouts which was a centralized service with only Google accounts. And Allo which was centralized service using external identities (phone numbers). I never knew that, and it was far from obvious from the marketing. Actually, was there any marketing?
somerandomness 4y ago
Hangouts started as a video app for Google Plus where you would just hangout and others would join after you posted you were hanging out on your stream. Then it subsumed gchat. Then video moved to other apps, eventually Meet
- cma 4y ago
  There were many. Google Meet, Google Hangouts Meet, Duo, Hangouts on Air video chatting, and even in 2008 Gmail had video chat https://www.technologizer.com/2008/11/11/gmail-adds-voice-and-video-chat/ https://www.technologizer.com/2008/11/11/gmail-adds-voice-an..., now there is a non-Hangouts Meet button banner integrated into Gmail wasting 10% of screen real estate of your inbox on Android's limited size screens.

pjc50 4y ago

Google Hangouts, like all the other google chat apps, was never intended to gain dominance, it was intended to win promotions for those involved.

matthewdgreen 4y ago
I've heard this explanation and I believe it. Nonetheless: Sundar Pichai has been CEO of Google since 2015. One would think that unifying messaging would be a priority from on-high since at least that time. Instead the company allowed poor management to continue, rather than grabbing this issue and saying "stop playing promotion games, this business is strategically important." But it didn't.
- smt88 4y ago
  Why is chat strategically important? What is Alphabet's strategy? They've only ever made substantial profit from ads, YouTube (which they acquired), and possibly Workspace or Cloud. The last time I looked at their filings, they weren't transparent about which businesses are profitable. This isn't a company that's had a coherent identity or strategy. iMessage is important to Apple because it's an exclusive social network that only Apple devices can access. Slack is important because it's a backbone of a business SaaS ecosystem. But Hangouts was never going to have either of these functions.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    Because protecting their lucrative ads business means preventing a competing hardware/OS company from gaining majority market-share and strangling you with its platform. That's why the very expensive (not profitable) Android project exists in the first place. And when such a competitor gains too much power, your ads business can suffer very real non-theoretical harms [1]. Right now Apple iOS marketshare is increasing: it's reached 60% in the US and an amazing 87% among teenagers! (Who tend to "stick" with a platform even after they become adults.) And while there are many features that are driving the push towards iOS (it's not just messaging!) the dominance of iMessage is definitely one feature people [particularly younger ones] care very much about. And while fixing messaging might not be the only problem here, it's relatively "inexpensive" to run messaging correctly compared to the cost of fixing things after your OS market share crosses a tipping point. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/09/06/apple-crashes-advertising-duopoly-google-and-facebooks-stranglehold-loosening-report-finds/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/09/06/apple-cras...
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      Android as a zombie OS (not profitable) makes it certain that a quality OS (gets software updates sometimes) competitive with iOS won't emerge. It's really a gift to Apple.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    chatting on the web improves uses of said web ? and in any case, throwing out 20 services in a row to kill them is certain to damage your brand. there was a time where google was synonimous with free and unavailable features (gmail, gmaps) and now google is that weird ever changing stream of A/B testing customer distracting devices. (youtube just flubbered their UI in the most spectacular manner btw)
  - systemicdanna 4y ago
    You just listed some of the reasons for having a successful messaging app. Why wouldn't any of those reasons be attractive to Google? They could have _finally_ owned a social network. Or a "backbone for a business SaaS ecosystem" tightly integrated into their Cloud services.
dekhn 4y ago
Its funny, I was at the TGIF where Hangouts was originally announced, by Chee Chew (who had run messaging at google for a while). Apparently Gchat was not growing while competitors with emojis and other features were. So gchat had to die to make room for hangouts. Many googlers explained taht gchat was not a competitor to those chat systems, but it still lead to the evisceration of classic gchat. Chew got his promo and continued to miss things up for years before finally leaving. The leaders never realyl understood that gchat was for professionals working in gmail, not teenagers in japan.
- thiht 4y ago
  > TGIF What’s that? Besides « thanks god it’s Friday »?
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Google had a weekly meeting where the executives would explain their latest crazy ideas and accomplishments. It's held on Thursday, because Sundar wanted to make people in Japan happier about attending.
    - mishac 4y ago
      Due to timezones? or is there something in Japanese culture that makes friday meetings disliked?
      - dekhn 4y ago
        Yes, they wanted to find a time that worked for the major 3 locations- Asia, EU, and US. If they held it on Friday, that was Saturday in Japan. So it was moved from Friday early evening to Thursday early evening.
- systemicdanna 4y ago
  I never understood this argument. > Apparently Gchat was not growing while competitors with emojis and other features were. So... add emojis and other features to Gchat, not create a new messaging app. Seems like every time there was a hot new messaging app with a new paradigm/ feature-set, Google's reaction was to build another competitor and sunset its previous efforts, disappointing everyone internally and externally.

elefantastisch 4y ago

Definitely this. I have been an Android user since my first smartphone. I've been a Gmail user much longer than that. I still to this day don't have the slightest idea what the distinction between Hangouts, Chat, and Messages (and whatever else I'm forgetting... Wave?) even is. Sometimes my new phone has an app called Chat, sometimes it's Messages, one time it was Hangouts... they all seem to be the same app to me. So I just use WhatsApp.

valdiorn 4y ago
I just checked what my pixel 6 has installed. I have something called "Duo", which, when I click it, shows me something called "Meet". Is it different from the other "meet" on my phone? Seems to be but not sure. Google's communication services are so complex and poorly defined I avoid them like the plague, always have. I just don't understand what app to use and how they all relate.
- julianlam 4y ago
  Yes. There's Meet, and then there's Meet (original), which is what was formerly called Hangouts... I think. Doesn't matter, I always hit the wrong icon 50% of the time.
  - joecool1029 4y ago
    Meat, Wangouts, Allo, Duo(not duolingo)? Talk, or Chat? I bet they took the team from Microsoft responsible for ramming the Skype/Lync/Communicator/Skype4Business brands into the ground and brought them over. Remember when Groove used to be Sharepoint but now it's a music player from them?
avisser 4y ago
You're missing at least Duo & Google Voice (which was embedded into Hangouts, until it wasn't).
- joecool1029 4y ago

jsnell 4y ago

> 2. Why did they proceed to have half a dozen different messaging services? Because they're different in ways that are not reconcilable into a single service. For example, considered just through an identity lens, you have: Talk, which was a federated service with federated identity. Hangouts which was a centralized service with only Google accounts. And Allo which was centralized service using external identities (phone numbers). You can't do all of those, but need to choose one. And none of them is the obvious single correct choice. (Hangouts and Chat are very similar though. But that was a completely transparent migration too.) Or to put it another way: Why does Apple have both iMessage and Facetime? Because video + voice is different from text. Why does FB have both Messenger and WhatsApp? Because one uses FB accounts, the other uses phone numbers. Why has Microsoft made a dozen different messenger apps? Because what consumers wants is different from what corporations want.

pjc50 4y ago
> Talk, which was a federated service with federated identity. Hangouts which was a centralized service with only Google accounts. And Allo which was centralized service using external identities (phone numbers). I never knew that, and it was far from obvious from the marketing. Actually, was there any marketing?

somerandomness 4y ago

Hangouts started as a video app for Google Plus where you would just hangout and others would join after you posted you were hanging out on your stream. Then it subsumed gchat. Then video moved to other apps, eventually Meet

cma 4y ago
There were many. Google Meet, Google Hangouts Meet, Duo, Hangouts on Air video chatting, and even in 2008 Gmail had video chat https://www.technologizer.com/2008/11/11/gmail-adds-voice-and-video-chat/ https://www.technologizer.com/2008/11/11/gmail-adds-voice-an..., now there is a non-Hangouts Meet button banner integrated into Gmail wasting 10% of screen real estate of your inbox on Android's limited size screens.