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If they had done this no one would be using WhatsApp today. Google has shown they don’t understand and can’t get chat right.

I was enthused for wave. Too bad.

Yeah, well, I was thinking of leaving the free-SMS-maybe-with-pics thing well enough alone and just letting you find "Chris aluminum siding" items ...

Might be worth a few cents for their advertising side-business, I dunno.

Nope, WhatsApp works just on phone number, not an email. It would have given them perpetual anxiety.

So they would have made WhatsApp work only with “Gmail” addresses instead - with Google Login and in a Chrome Desktop app only (of course) - and they’d have then shut it down after few years. Or people might have stopped using it before the shutdown.

The G+ login nonsense all happened in response to Facebook and Messenger (and iMessage). Before that, Chat was open XMPP.

Then just kill it after a few years