> Wechat is not a super app, it is a browser.
...and a payment service, and a search app, and a messaging app, and a social media service, and a video calling platform, and a VOIP calling service, and a video sharing platform
...and a payment service, and a search app, and a messaging app, and a social media service, and a video calling platform, and a VOIP calling service, and a video sharing platform
"You can technically visit any site you want" is really not an apt rebuttal to an app that contains a multitude of first-party features.
I was trying to point out that the super-app label stems from the bevy of first-party features WeChat has built in. There aren't real analogs to that in the western world (Facebook would like to be one of them).
That the government has their hands on their scale is orthogonal to this discussion.
They have phone and internet plans, they have mobile and desktop OSs, they have self-driving taxis, they have email, they have IM, they (had) a social network, they have a payment system, they have cloud storage and computing, they even have actual phones and computers. Sure, they miss a couple of things like a marketplace, but if US citizens somehow were forced to use all-Google devices they would definitely do everything with Google Search, Google Duo, GMail and Google Pay just like the Chinese do everything via WeChat. In that case obviously Google would integrate all their services even tighter by allowing almost everything to be done through their IM or email, but right now they are much more similar to WeChat than you might think
> they miss a couple of things like a marketplace
Really all there is to it. Google offers disparate services instead of bundling and lacks essential parts of WeChat (e.g. commerce, social media).
The comparison comes up short.