A very brief history of every Google messaging app

guest · Jun 21, 2021

A very brief history of every Google messaging app
What a decade and a half of confusing services can tell us about the future
June 21, 2021
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-allo-hangouts-talk-messaging-mess-timeline

Over the past 15 years, Google has introduced more than a dozen messaging services spanning text, voice, and video calling. This week, the company’s efforts culminated in the general availability of Google Chat, a combination of Slack / Discord-style rooms with more traditional messaging.

It’s the sort of announcement that might have been expected to bring some consistency to the company’s muddled messenger messaging, but — as is traditional for Google in this area — there’s plenty of confusion to go around.
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For one thing, Google Chat is the name fans have affectionately used to refer to Google’s original messaging service, Google Talk, for many years. Is this a coincidence that brings Google’s messaging ouroboros full circle, or is it meant to entice GChat fans into actually using the company’s latest attempt?

Here’s a breakdown of Google’s major messaging offerings over the years, with currently active services in bold: [...]
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Here are the four eras of Google messaging so far:

The Google Talk era (2004–2011)
The Google+ / Hangouts era (2011–2016)
The Google Allo era (2016–2019)
The modern era: back to Hangouts — sort of (2020 to date)
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roger_m · Jun 21, 2021

I've been an Android user for more than ten years and have used none of them,

guest · Aug 25, 2021

A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps
Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess.
August 25, 2021
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...ability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/

Google Talk, Google's first-ever instant messaging platform, launched on August 24, 2005. This company has been in the messaging business for 16 years, meaning Google has been making messaging clients for longer than some of its rivals have existed. But thanks to a decade and a half of nearly constant strategy changes, competing product launches, and internal sabotage, you can't say Google has a dominant or even stable instant messaging platform today.

Currently, you would probably rank Google's offerings behind every other big-tech competitor. A lack of any kind of top-down messaging leadership at Google has led to a decade and a half of messaging purgatory, with Google both unable to leave the space altogether and unable to commit to a single product.
There have been periods when Google briefly produced a good messaging solution, but the constant shutdowns, focus-shifting, and sabotage of established products have stopped Google from carrying much of these user bases—or user goodwill—forward into the present day.
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Because no single company has ever failed at something this badly, for this long, with this many different products (and because it has barely been a month since the rollout of Google Chat), the time has come to outline the history of Google messaging. Prepare yourselves, dear readers, for a non-stop rollercoaster of new product launches, neglected established products, unexpected shut-downs, and legions of confused, frustrated, and exiled users.
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A very brief history of every Google messaging app

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