Google is wrong. Apple’s iMessage is a failure
> It works. It’s better than anything Google has attempted. The problem is, it’s not good enough.<p>This is wrong. Google had a very good messaging system, Google Talk. It worked really well, was based on open standards, supported federation, video/audio calls and was making its way into smartphones. For example, the Nokia 770-N9 series supported Google Talk as early as Q2 2006. Calls based on an open standard in a smartphone, already in 2006...<p>However, internal politics at Google led to the discontinuation of Google Talk in favor of a long stream of confusing and half-finished attempts: Google Chat, Hangouts, Duo, Spaces, Allo and Meet. I've lost track of how many different services they have come up with. Apparently there's more of them I didn't even know about [1]. It's comical and sad, since the first one was great and had tons of users thanks to being embedded into Gmail.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-allo-hangouts-talk-messaging-mess-timeline" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-allo...</a>