google's messaging strategy has gotten so bad that they now have to remind consumers which of the apps are made for them. i myself had no clue that the google chat app in the play store was targeted towards consumers, i just assumed that the app was google workspaces only considering they always push rcs & that the play store description doesn't go two sentences without talking about enterprise & google workspaces.

it's kinda wild when you consider that they had a 17 year headstart on this & still somehow lost the messaging app/site race multiple times

Please use Signal. It is a great alternative!

Killing hangouts just made me use other platforms and throw Google in the bin.

When they keep killing stuff I use, I get burnt.

Huh? They confused 1st of July with 1st of April?

Another chat app???????

They don't get tired announcing and killing all of those chat apps????

Who's going to bother inviting friends to chat in a platform that will be killed in one year max????

I used GTalk with the family.

Then you killed it.

Google’s promotion-pack culture strikes again. You don’t get promoted at Google for “maintaining a successful product and keeping people happy.” You do get promoted for launching a new product, even if it competes with another well-liked Google product.

So if you want to be successful at Google, you launch a new chat service.

"We promise we wont kill this one!"

Let's all be grateful that Google handled GChat and its successors so incompetently. There was a window of time in which the world might have gotten hooked into using Google for instant messaging, which would have been a privacy disaster. Lucky, they fucked it up.

…nope, can’t use it to chat with my friends and family, we all gave up on Teh Goog and I worked there for over a decade! 😆

(also, by the time you see this, they may have renamed it or introduced a competing messaging app. or both.)

No thanks goolag

The article says

Just to recap: Google Talk (gchat) > Google Hangouts > Hangouts Chat > Google Chat

but of course that's only part of the story. Here's a longer recap from 2021.

Matrix

I always used to use allo and hangouts when I was a flight attendant as they would still send messages despite the airlines paywall for the internet on their wifi. no idea how it worked but was awesome little gimmic

I remember I actually used Allo, and Hangouts

Seriously google WTF

It's impossible to keep up with Google's various services. Unless it's Gmail or Photos, it'll probably get killed within a year.

My D&D group uses it for planning. It's basically the only context where I use it. It's suitable to the task, but doesn't really have any distinguishing features.

Yeah let me just convince my friends and family to stop using Signal and start using Google Chat. I'll get riiiiiight on that!

All i ask Google is for them to let users install Gmail Go on all devices.