This is different from the "browser wars", because the thing that people are trying to access through their choice of messenger app does not look, feel, and fun

This is different from the "browser wars", because the thing that people are trying to access through their choice of messenger app does not look, feel, and function differently depending on which one they choose. The experience doesn't break because one chat application decides to implement one feature and others don't because they aren't supposed to work together. It's similar, however, in that consumers have a lot of choice, with no one chat application really being that much better than any other in terms of features or experience, just that if we could just get everyone on one and for that one application to continue to improve, everything would be great, in theory. This isn't going to stop any time soon.