Is it still a powerhouse if no one uses it?
The 'internet chat' they introduced a different service called 'Chat' which runs in some consumer version of Google Workspaces.
I also really hate XML based chat, but the OG standard failed because the federated clients had a poor required minimum standard for interoperability and other stacks E.G. Microsoft's whatever version of it ... I actually forget offhand but it was something anti-competitive that also broke how useful it was outside of their particular implementation.
We were also supposed to get chat with Google Allo but they practically killed it before launch.
> Before launch, Google touted strong privacy in the app, with particular emphasis on messages stored "transiently and in non-identifiable form". However, at launch, privacy was significantly rolled back, with Google keeping logs of messages indefinitely (or until the user deletes messages) in an effort to improve the app's "smart reply" feature.
About 20: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...