RIP Google Hangouts, Google’s final, greatest likelihood to compete with iMessage

Google Hangouts is scheduled for demise right now. The cellphone app has been individually booting individuals off the service since July, however the final vestiges of Hangouts, the online app, can be shut down right now.

For a quick interval, Hangouts was Google’s greatest, most bold, hottest messaging effort, however 5 billion downloads later, Google is shifting on. Hangout’s subsequent of kin, Google Chat, ought to have your whole messages and contacts robotically imported by now, however the brand new service is a mere shadow of the unique plan for Hangouts.

The closing of Hangouts is the most recent chapter within the mess that’s Google’s messaging historical past. Google Speak launched 17 years in the past, and Google nonetheless does not have a aggressive message platform. A part of the rationale we’re on Google’s umpteenth messaging app is that there is no such thing as a strong, secure house for messaging inside Google.

You may see the issue within the firm’s 2022 messaging lineup. The Google Workspace group makes Google Chat—that is Google’s enterprise group making a Slack competitor—after which there’s Google Messages, a carrier-centric sort-of-competitor to Apple’s iMessage that seemingly grew out of the Android group. Is the group that makes Android kind of necessary than the group that makes Gmail and the remainder of the Google apps? Each have their comprehensible causes for chasing messaging, however splitting the Google person base throughout two incompatible merchandise makes it robust for both mission to achieve any traction. Moreover these two huge initiatives, there’s additionally nonetheless Google Voice and a bunch of siloed messaging companies in apps like Google Pictures and Google Pay.

As soon as upon a time, Google tried to repair this case. Messaging was speculated to have an actual house at Google, and that house was speculated to be (cue dramatic thunderclap) Google+. Again in 2011, Google’s then-CEO Larry Web page determined that social media was the long run and spun up the Google+ mission throughout the corporate. The top of G+ bought the title “senior vice chairman,” making him one of many eight-ish individuals who reported on to Web page, enshrining Google+ as one of many principal pillars of Google. This division was speculated to take full possession of messaging, and it launched its messaging mission—Google+ Hangouts—two years later.

Hangouts, which was codenamed “Mission Babel,” was charged with the duty of—get this—unifying Google’s messaging portfolio. Google had 4 messaging apps on the time: Google+ Messenger, Google Speak, Android’s SMS app, and Google Voice. Hangouts launched in 2013, and by the top of the 12 months had built-in SMS messages. By 2014, the app was absolutely operational and featured Hangouts Messages, SMS, and Google Voice in a single app, all accessible out of your cellphone or anyplace on the Web. With the discharge of Android 4.4 in 2013, there was no standalone Android SMS app. Hangouts was the one default SMS choice.

Google had constructed its iMessage clone, and it was an unbelievable service. All of your communication was accessible from a single messaging app in a single easy-to-use interface. Google additionally had tangible benefits over iMessage, because of huge cross-platform compatibility. Hangouts was on Android, iOS, the online, and inside Gmail. That meant the service natively labored on telephones, watches, vehicles, tablets, internet browsers, and even Google Glass at one level. Google would in all probability have a good footing in messaging right now if it simply stored updating and investing in Hangouts.