G+. The slogan at the time was "one unified Google" -- to I think rightfully correct a mistake that Google had a very diverse set of products many of which did not properly interact.

As I understand it, GChat wasn't seen seen as able to integrate well into G+. So Hangouts was built on the G+/social infrastructure.

To that team's credit they did somewhat seamlessly move users over from GChat to Hangouts without many hiccups.

Of course, after the G+ effort disintegrated... we got Allo & Duo

There must be a name for a concept that seems like it would be obviously true, but actually isn't.

I don't think it's a bad thing that google ha a diverse set of products that didn't work together. I don't need my google calc/excel to integrate with youtube, and I don't need google play music to integrate with gmail.

Google should look at these things as individual companies, which it seems like is something that they finally somewhat figured out with the alphabet rebrand. Just let gmail be a successful company on its own, and let youtube be a successful company on its own. From my perspective as a user, things actually get worse when all of these things try to play together.

> I don't need my google calc/excel to integrate with youtube, and I don't need google play music to integrate with gmail. Google should look at these things as individual companies, which it seems like is something that they finally somewhat figured out with the alphabet rebrand.

That makes sense to an extent. Unfortunately, Google has created a number of products or "companies" with overlapping features that are in direct competition with one another. Just in the communication space, they have: Hangouts, Gmail, Inbox, Allo, Duo, Messages, and Google Voice.

These actively compete with one another and make the sum of all the products worse than just one good product. If I want to send an SMS message, I can currently use Hangouts, Messages, or Google Voice. I don't want to decide which to use, and I certainly don't want the one I choose to just disappear one day while I get booted over to another app.

"There must be a name for a concept that seems like it would be obviously true, but actually isn't."

Specious?

Body builder strong?

Social was the department that was running Google+ and Hangout, and at one point I think Youtube fell under its control as well? Vic Gundotra was the SVP who ran it. Despite my mixed feelings toward products from Social I had a lot of respect for Vic.

Can you expand on that? I feel like many people are negative about Vic G so I’m curious about what positive points you might see.

Vic Gundotra was a turkey trying to be an eagle with this stupid twitter commentary.

haha, i like your figure of speech.

Social needed features for G+ and success in social was seen as important (everyone's bonus was tied to it). So Hangouts became a G+ headline feature despite having very little to do with social.