[lindseya]

I was surprised to read that "Google has struggled to create such network effects with both Hangouts and Messenger." At my university, all the student groups that I have worked on use Google docs, Messenger, and Hangouts to coordinate. We don't use Messenger a lot, only when we are online working on a document together, but we do use Hangouts weekly. For us, Google is for group productivity (sort of like Slack), but I couldn't see using Google Messenger for communicating with friends or asking questions to a chat bot. I wonder who their target audience is for this new product. Any ideas?

[unsignedint]

From the standpoint of someone who had to ask people to use common messenger among a team of people with varying team in the field operation at an event, biggest issue I have seen with Google Hangouts (I guess this also applies to Facebook in that respect as well) is that there seems to be a bit of reluctance from people when they are required signing up to more "blanket" service, in this case, Google.

I guess for some who do not use other Google services (especially when they don't use Gmail, YouTube, etc.) either don't want set up or show high resistance in setting up a new account with Google.

Some privacy concern aside, many of those integrated services works great especially when they are used effectively, but I think the flip side is that those services tend to be "too heavy" for some people who just want to use it as a messenger and nothing else. (Actually, I wish they had an option like that.)

[hobarrera]

For me, this article is literally the first time I've ever heard of "Google Messenger".

A few other students at my university use Hangouts and Docs, but generally everything is done via email and github.