<story><title>The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts</title><url>https://www.blog.google/products/messages/latest-messages-allo-duo-and-hangouts/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jordanthoms</author><text>This is just an utter mess. Google keeps ignoring and trying to kill Hangouts (which should still be called GChat, that was an incredibly stupid rebrand), and building new products instead of investing in the one which actually has some potential.&lt;p&gt;Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat&amp;#x2F;Google talk from the early Gmail days and kept investing in it. It was great on the early versions of Android! The failure here is entirely self imposed and a major indictment of their senior management team.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Cookingboy</author><text>I was there when that happened. The whole rebranding&amp;#x2F;transition of GTalk&amp;#x2F;GChat was the result of some political muscle flex by Social and its army of PMs, then after Social lost its favorite child status Allo was born as a result, championed by another army of PMs, and I wonder if Duo had a similar story of birth.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat&amp;#x2F;Google talk from the early Gmail days and kept investing in it.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s just not what Google was back then. It was all about PMs&amp;#x2F;designers wanting to jump onto the shinest and newest projects and lots of politics were involved to win support&amp;#x2F;attention&amp;#x2F;resources from the top management.</text></comment>
<story><title>The latest on Messages, Allo, Duo and Hangouts</title><url>https://www.blog.google/products/messages/latest-messages-allo-duo-and-hangouts/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jordanthoms</author><text>This is just an utter mess. Google keeps ignoring and trying to kill Hangouts (which should still be called GChat, that was an incredibly stupid rebrand), and building new products instead of investing in the one which actually has some potential.&lt;p&gt;Google could have been a major player in messaging if they had just stuck with GChat&amp;#x2F;Google talk from the early Gmail days and kept investing in it. It was great on the early versions of Android! The failure here is entirely self imposed and a major indictment of their senior management team.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smt88</author><text>Want to know an even more stupid rebrand?&lt;p&gt;A totally new, half-baked &lt;i&gt;business&lt;/i&gt; product called Hangouts Chat.</text></comment>