[tablespoon]

> A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps

How do they keep failing over and over, in the same way, when these failures are a well-known embarrassment?

You'd think the CEO would either just ban development of new messaging apps or pick a winner and give it the same kind of care and feeding as GMail.

[the_only_law]

I was completely fine with the old Hangouts thing. A small little call/chat system embedded into the inbox. Would occasionally ping friends and occasionally chat.

[ako]

You maybe, but Google is looking for a whatsapp/wechat killer, and will keep trying till they have it, or abandon the idea.

[throwawaylinux]

My guess is because things like that don't make any or much direct revenue, so they aren't going to get senior executives to want to take ownership and champion the thing.

Killing a chat product that has always been a net loss for the company might not appear to be a failure.

[tablespoon]

> Killing a chat product that has always been a net loss for the company might not appear to be a failure.

Doing that once, yeah, doing that over and over, no so much.

At this point the smartest thing to do it just kill them all and definitively say: "No more, this is the end of Google chat apps."

[throwawaylinux]

> Doing that once, yeah, doing that over and over, no so much.

What do you mean? It's always good move to kill a product that loses money for the company.

Why do they start so many new products that are losers? That's a different question. Possibly the incentives for starting new products are poorly calibrated, which is the common narrative. But possibly they aren't and they are quite happy to make a mountain of shit, including doing almost the same thing over and over, for the small chance of a diamond. That's entirely consistent with the rest of the start-up industry.

[tablespoon]

>> Doing that once, yeah, doing that over and over, no so much.

> What do you mean? It's always good move to kill a product that loses money for the company.

Look at the Ars Technica article I was responding to. Google has failed at chat apps repeatedly for a long time, to the point where it's an embarrassment AND they've created a self-reinforcing vicious cycle of failure. The smart decision for users is to avoid any Google chat app like the plague, because it will inevitably be killed, which means those apps will also fail for lack of users.

A business doesn't have infinite tries to get something right. Eventually they burn up all their credibility. They should kill them all, and stop developing new ones, completely exiting the space.

[throwawaylinux]

I know they have repeatedly scrapped them and repeatedly made new ones. That's the whole basis for the discussion we're having.

The question is what their strategy is. Obviously they know this too. The idea that nerds on HN know what is best for the company's brand or reputation is dubious at best. Google is (allegedly) one of the most valuable brands in the world, and more trustworthy than Microsoft or Apple or Amazon (https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-tiktok-least-trusted-...).

Sure us supernerds will guffaw and chortle into our neckbeards to one another and deride Google for killing lots of things, but how much does that actually hurt their bottom line or brand value?