The primary feature of messaging software is "all my friends are on it". As an ex-Googler, all my friends are on Hangouts.

I think that on a technical level, WhatsApp is the best messaging software on the market. It at least features reliable message delivery, something that both Hangouts and iMessage have yet to get down. But its usage is largely limited to my Indian friends here in the U.S, which makes it of limited use to me.

I think the Hangouts development team is dead or something.

Agreed. I'm unfortunately forced to use the Hangouts app on android since Google Voice was smushed into it (losing 90% of its best features in the process, like being able to mark voicemails as spam). So now I'm stuck doing my texting shoehorned alongside this other chat app that none of my friends use except by accident when they meant to send a text.

Now Google's decided to split SMS back out into a separate SMS app, so god only knows what's going to happen to Google Voice texting in that transition. I think the Voice team got merged into the hangouts team and shortly reassigned, and then everyone who was left on the hangouts team was moved a month or two after that.

Next time I replace my phone I'm just going to bite the bullet and port my phone number back out to a real carrier. It's a bummer, since this is the only Google product that I've ever paid them actual money for.

> Agreed. I'm unfortunately forced to use the Hangouts app on android since Google Voice was smushed into it (losing 90% of its best features in the process, like being able to mark voicemails as spam). So now I'm stuck doing my texting shoehorned alongside this other chat app that none of my friends use except by accident when they meant to send a text.

You can go into hangouts settings and turn off google voice handling.

The problem was actually that once you'd migrated a GV account to using hangouts, there was no way to go back. Did a bit of looking and this is no longer the case: http://i.imgur.com/qtxfYGP.png

So I guess I can go back. I'd miss the better voice calling integration (the one improvement that "hangouts dialer" brought) and I'm not sure how well maintained the GV app is these days, but I may give it a go.

For a data point of one: I refused the popup and never switched and things work the same as ever for me. The only annoying thing is that you get that dialog every single time you visit the website. The app is virtually the same as it's been for years, for better or worse.

Western messaging apps are a joke compared to their international counterparts. If you want to see some fierce competition and cutting edge features, you need to look towards LINE and WeChat. (For US messenger apps, I actually like FB Messenger the best but it might just be because the Pusheen stickers are so damn amazing.)