[Zak]

Google had the opportunity to own this space a decade ago when they made Hangouts the default SMS client on Android. It's exactly what Apple did with iMessage, but Hangouts was cross-platform.

It's absolutely bizarre to me they didn't iterate on that. I'm kind of glad they didn't.

[starttoaster]

On the flipside, Hangouts being sunset is the main reason I eventually left the Android ecosystem. Hangouts on a Pixel phone on Google Fi service was excellent for an SMS app. Feeling snubbed by the life getting choked out of Hangouts, I'm no longer a user of all 3.

[patmorgan23]

Yeah, it really is the post child for Google not being able to innovate in it's modern form.

What's really changed about their core products in the last 10 years? (maps, mail, ads, YouTube, docs/gsuite) some of them have gotten some nice QoL improvements but nothing has really been added to that list because they keep killing products off.