There were also the chat integrations in Gmail, Docs and Google Plus. I think google is still trying to make something stick.

which is fine - but why not one product. does every feature need a new app/product?

Did anyone actually check if this isn't just the same codebase repeatedly released as differently-named products, in hope that eventually one sticks?

Google is going to have to reinvent a federated chat protocol just to reign in their own products...

They don't have to reinvent any federated protocol; such a protocol already exists. See http://matrix.org

It would be really cool if google creates products that leverages the matrix protocol. I mean, gmail leverages email, smtp, etc....why not build a platform that leverages matrix?

And yet, I was evaluating a chat room app for the org I could post messages to from a script like a chat bot and none of these came up as options. We have a google apps account.

Google and Apple are competing as to which one can act more like a Monopoly as Microsoft was during 2000s.