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Comment by provost | Hacker News Reader

Also, they have had Hangouts, Messenger, Talk, Voice, Allo, and Duo... most with the same functionality. What is up with Google's product management? Is there a strategy?

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Then they seem to randomly consolidate (I believe Hangouts was supposed to bring all that together, including SMS), only to do a complete 180 a few months later and split everything up again. I mean it's kind of absurd at this point.

I think the hangouts/duo/allo is a one-off, and that was because of Vic Gundotra loosing out?

But you forgot Chat!

They've held their Slack competitor announced nearly a year ago in EAP so long you wonder if the damn thing will ever see the light of day...

https://gsuite.google.com/campaigns/index__chateap.html

You forgot Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/

Thanks for pointing that out! I had no idea it existed.

Which is also branded as one of "Meet" [1], "Google Meet" [2], or "Hangouts Meet" [3], depending on where you go.

[1] https://meet.google.com/

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+meet

[3] https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id1013231476

> Meet doesn't work on your browser

> To join the video meeting

> Install the current version of Google Chrome

Google is the new Microsoft.

Also, don't forget Google Spaces. Although you might as well, it lasted less than a year.

And Spaces: https://get.google.com/spaces/

Oh, that one's already gone. Why on earth would anyone jump on board a new Google product when they have the lifespan of fruit flies?

My understanding is that they effectively let these service duke it out to see which one survives and then choose that one.

The problem is, most of these sorts of services work via a network effect. Especially chat: You use the one all your friends are using. Payment is the one that all your accounts and stores you go to support.

Running a bunch of your own competitors is self-defeating when it ensures you don't have the network effect. Google Talk worked mostly because it was in Gmail, and everyone had Gmail. People who never used it had it, because Gmail.

Darwinian Product Strategy?

Quick, someone should register it and publish a book and make a career giving talks about it...

Feel the same. One example is Angular Typescript and then there is AngularDart, both are used by teams in Google.

Maybe that works for their internal politics, but not for the users. I've given up even trying new Google offerings

Never said it was a good strategy ;)

Hmm, what? I think e.g. Talk/Hangouts and Voice are radically different: one is about text messaging and video calls, another is about a connection to the "legacy" voice telephony network, with a dial-able number, etc. They started (long ago) form very different areas.

They could have a seamless bridge between them, though. They sort of tried: you can dial a phone from Hangouts, but not back, or you can receive your Voice text messages in the email, but not send a reply back (afaict).

Google is notoriously bad at cohesive product management. They have a number of bright ideas, but no visionary in the consumer product space, so apparently no coordination.

Google Voice was a rebrand of a product acquired in 2009. Google Talk was an XMPP chat service launched in 2005, and integrated into Gmail in 2006. "+Hangouts" was originally a feature inside Google Plus, launched in 2011, just like "+Messenger". 'Google Hangouts' was a 2013 launch to bring Talk, +Messenger, and +Hangouts into one product. This was further blurred by their various apps, which sometimes had differing functionality from the websites.

The latest iteration of Google Voice has chat, for example, while SMS support inside the Hangouts Android App was removed on purpose and users told to use yet another app, first called Messenger, now called Messages.

All their communication products suffer from convergent evolution, yet remain in dizzyingly varying states of integration with each other.

I've had a miserable love-hate relationship with Google Voice for years, what do you mean by "the latest iteration of Google Voice has chat?"

Announced in January 2017, the Android, iOS, and Web versions of Google Voice have a revamped UI and, apparently, text chat [1]; discussed on HN at [2].

[1] https://blog.google/products/google-voice/ringing-2017-updat... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13463940

>you can dial a phone from Hangouts, but not back

I use google voice and hangouts. I can both send and receive voice calls using my google voice number via hangouts. I can also send and receive sms message using my google voice number via hangouts. Both of these have been true for at least 4 years, maybe 5. They started trying to phase sms out of hangouts a few years back, but never removed it for google voice users.

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