Google Splits Hangouts into Chat and Meet
Poe's Law as applied to enterprise messaging platforms.<p>Dear Google,<p>Please make one amazing chat app. Just one. Merge Allo, Duo, Chat, Hangouts, Meet, Messenger, Voice, and your RCS platform into one extensible platform with third party integrations.<p>The comments in this thread? They are not flattering. It is not a sign of joy that people comment on Google releasing a new chat app, or confusing your branding even further.<p>Here's a quick question: I have a friend on Android, I have an iPhone, how do I message them? What's your best solution. What if I want to switch from messaging to voice? What if I want to make a video call? What if I want to invite a third person? iPhones make it easy to transition between different types of communication, and provide useful SMS sync to computers.<p>Slack, Microsoft's Teams, and surprisingly Discord, are all moving in the direction of being a single hub for communication. Admittedly, Slack and Teams don't make it easy (yet) to message people outside your organization. Discord does, and they're beating you to the punch, quelle surprise. All of the above platforms are easy to set up on the web and smartphones.<p>So please, please stop this proliferation. Stop footgunning yourselves on messaging platforms. Build one, make it amazing, and devote resources to making it work for users and organizations.