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Honestly crap like this is devaluing their brand. At this point I have 0 faith that Google will stick to any of their random products (Google Wave, Buzz, Reader, Code, Google+) and therefore I avoid using them.

It really is devaluing the brand. Bring back Google Talk.

Google had corporate/cross platform messaging before it was cool. Gmail, Google Talk was a killer combo for our small teams.

Dumb dumb dumb.

Google Talk was perfect. PER-FECT. Of course they killed it!

They didn't even properly kill it, they just let it slowly stagnate.

Like they're doing with Hangouts now. No real new features have appeared in years.

I really miss Google reader.

Feedly isn't bad. I have been with them since Reader was shut down.

That's precisely the point. It should compete on its own merits.

I think danohu's point was that with branding, it's hard to stand out in the crowded Google messaging space.

Two easy ways to stand out:

1. Brand 2. Money

If they took this approach it would require a much more concerted marketing strategy.

Well they happen to be in the marketing business so...

Google/Alphabet are not in the marketing business. In fact they have pretty awful marketing. They are in the displaying ads business.