If at First You Fail, Try 10 Times
February 10, 2020
If at first you don’t succeed try eight, nine, 10 times. Ars Technica tells us that “Google’s Tenth Messaging Service Will ‘Unify’ Gmail, Drive, Hangouts Chat.” Writer Ron Amadeo cites an article from The Information (subscription required) when he reports Google is working on another messaging app that sounds a lot like their vision for the Google Hangouts Chat service they added to the GSuite business tools in 2018. Amadeo describes:
“According to the report, this ‘new unified communications app’ will merge functions from Gmail, Drive, Hangouts Chat, and Hangouts Meet. Slack already lets you send messages, share files, and do video chats, which covers most of these apps. Pulling in features from Gmail, though, like the last email you sent the person you’re messaging, would be unique and genuinely useful. One alarming thing about the report is that it refers to this service as a ‘mobile app’ and doesn’t mention anything about a Web or desktop app, which is how many employees primarily use Slack. “News that the app will pull in Hangouts Chat features makes us wonder what will happen to the actual Hangouts Chat service. One of the current plans in the Google messaging mess is to merge Google’s biggest consumer chat platform, Hangouts, with Hangouts Chat, its current enterprise chat platform (despite the similar names, the two apps are unrelated). If Hangouts Chat is merging into something else, does that mean the plan to migrate consumer Hangouts over isn’t happening?”
Good question. We are reminded Google has launched nine previous messaging apps, demonstrating its apparent fear of product commitment. We shall see whether this iteration sticks around long enough to even establish a healthy network of users.
Cynthia Murrell, February 10, 2020
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