[somerandomness]

Hangouts started as a video app for Google Plus where you would just hangout and others would join after you posted you were hanging out on your stream. Then it subsumed gchat. Then video moved to other apps, eventually Meet

[cma]

There were many. Google Meet, Google Hangouts Meet, Duo, Hangouts on Air video chatting, and even in 2008 Gmail had video chat https://www.technologizer.com/2008/11/11/gmail-adds-voice-an..., now there is a non-Hangouts Meet button banner integrated into Gmail wasting 10% of screen real estate of your inbox on Android's limited size screens.