
Google is rebranding Hangouts Chat as just Google Chat - sdhillon
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/9/21215588/google-chat-hangouts-meet-g-suite-name-change-rebranding
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secfirstmd
Didn't their used to a be a Google Chat? Isn't that what the chat in Gmail
was/is? What about Google Ello or whatever it was called. I'm so confused. I
can say for certain I won't be bothering using it. Signal/Matrix/WhatsApp and
JitsiMeet and whatever the people I work with need to use are more than good
enough.

~~~
et-al
Yes, the chat in Gmail was "Gmail Chat" aka Gchat, released back in 2006. The
standalone app was called Google Talk. [1]

And in 2017, they forced everyone off Google Talk / Gchat and onto Hangouts
[2], only to bring us back to where we are.

I'd love to hear the behind-the-scenes about this.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Talk)

[2] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15051272/google-talk-
gcha...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15051272/google-talk-gchat-
replaced-hangouts-messaging-gmail)

~~~
balladeer
No, not really bringing us back where we were. Back then in the beginning it
was a federated XMPP implementation and you could talk with G Chat accounts
from outside the Google ecosystem and that's not changing.

Also, there's another "Chat" in Google stables right now - Google's RCS
messaging app.

My guess would be Google is just doing its periodic itch thingie that it does
with messengers and social networks.

~~~
et-al
You're correct.

I too, believe that they replaced a perfectly good product with an inferior
one, then had the audacity to assume the name of the original product.

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gullyfur
Just had this conversation with a friend. We can no longer remember what the
current name is of Google's messaging products. For a company that prides
itself with it's brand and product management, it's ridiculous.

Wasn't it called Google Chat / GChat back in ~2007?

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ksaj
I hope that they will start to put these different chat platforms together.
You have Teams, Duo, Hangouts, Allo... (all of which are current, and not
listing the other many video chat apps they've already dumped, as mentioned in
another thread). They all do relatively the same core thing, but are seemingly
incompatible with each other for no reason whatsoever.

I'm guessing this is symptomatic of trying to compete with specific companies'
offerings without having a vision of their own, so they end up with a huge
amount of overlap, and a huger amount of good services that they end up
trashing.

I purposely don't use the Google services that one can predict will eventually
get treated like Google's many Blogger attempts. They don't ever become stable
enough, and eventually just evaporate when they come up with a tenth
iteration.

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allears
Oh, Google. Another flavor of the day, or is it the hour? Takeaway: Any Google
product has a very very short lifespan, so don't get too attached...

~~~
smt88
> _Takeaway: Any Google product has a very very short lifespan, so don 't get
> too attached..._

While that's true, it's not the takeaway from this article. In fact, Google
has surprisingly not killed Hangouts yet. This finally seems like a move in
the right direction:

\- consistent naming, i.e. "Google [One-word Product Function]"

\- "Meet" and "Chat" are business/group tools

\- "Hangouts" is a personal/social tool

This is the kind of clarity they could've used years ago, instead of creating
Allo and Duo.

