I work for a Shopify company and we're a self-described "Google shop", meaning we use Gmail/docs/drive/meet but our messaging app is Slack. That shows you how much Google has failed with messaging.

My previous employer was UPS, a top to bottom Microsoft shop, and they were in the process of switching from Skype for Business (Lync) to Microsoft Teams when I left. Even Microsoft has done a better job with their messaging option.

I'd argue that while their current offering might be better (and I don't think it is), Microsoft has historically definitely done an even worse job than Google. And that's pretty difficult.

Around 2008, Microsoft had a huge advantage in messaging compared to whoever came next. MSN was widely used in much of the world, on every continent, and the product was far ahead of its time. Maybe not as dominant in the US, but the US has always been weird about messaging and still is. Video calls, group chats, chatbots for companies, they had everything. They were set up for success.

> In June 2009, Microsoft reported the service attracted over 330 million active users each month, placing it among the most widely used instant-messaging clients in the world

330 million, now that was a big number in 2009. Competition? Blackberry Messenger for a while, but that was never going to last with the lock-in. Facebook Messaging was getting popular but that too was (and is) very barebones.

What do they do with this golden egg? They kill it and force people over to.. Skype, an (especially at the time) poor piece of software with maybe 10% of the functionality that MSN had (which did audio/video calls just fine) and they wasted billions on acquiring. If they'd have kept developing it and made quality messaging apps for all mobile platforms, I don't see how Whatsapp would've stood a chance.

Google at least never was in that position. They were late to the game, only needing to start caring about messaging after buying Android and it becoming a success. Microsoft had 330 million people actively messaging in 2009! Did Hangouts even have 330 million active(!) users in 2020?

Teams is still stunningly poor. We use it at work and the Windows (hah, how's that for integration) version is so poor that a lot of us run it in the browser, where it runs marginally better. Images not loading, pasting a file or image not properly working, slow as molasses, far too limited settings to filter notifications.

I honestly prefer Google Worskpace's Chat to MS Teams by a mile. It's intuitive, the threading model is way better than Teams (which hides messages by default! Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?) and it integrates well with GSuite. In my org there are still holdouts who prefer using it over Slack.

I didn't know Google Workspace had chat until I read this comment, and we use Google Workspace.

I don’t know how you can miss it, it’s built into Gmail’s interface.

I haven't had to deal with the horror of the Gmail interface in decades and I can't even imagine a reason to bother trying.

Personally I like it better than Outlook.

I don’t have a choice anyway since my company disables IMAP/Exchange for security reasons.

Google Chat, it actually loads on the sidebar of gmail unless you disable it... though I can't blame you for never noticing/caring.

We are going to need a full diagram to explain what the google chat app is. From what I remember it goes

Google Talk

Google Voice

Google Wave

Google Buzz

Google Hangouts

Allo / Duo

Hangouts Meet / Hangouts Chat

Google Meet / Google Chat

Currently there's

  +----------+-------------+------------------------+-------------+
  |          | Audio Calls | Messaging              | Video Calls |
  +----------+-------------+------------------------+-------------+
  | Consumer | Duo         | Messages (SMS/RCS),    | Duo         |
  |          |             | Hangouts               |             |
  +----------+-------------+------------------------+-------------+
  | Business | Voice       | Chat (Formerly         | Meet        |
  |          |             | Hangouts Chat), Voice  |             |
  +----------+-------------+------------------------+-------------+

Business products are available for consumers too, but with limitations. (For example, consumers can't make bots for Chat.)

Hangouts is almost gone, starting a video call just makes a Meet and sends the link as a message, the messaging still works but has been folded into Chat (They interop for now at least.) so there's no reason to keep Hangouts on anymore really. Meet is for larger meetings, Duo is mostly for one-on-one calls but has group support now too. Chat is basically a Slack clone. Messages is Google's SMS/MMS/RCS app for Android and it requires an Android phone with an active phone plan but it has a web interface for composing messages on your computer. Voice does phone calls, voicemail, and SMS and MMS with a number from Google, and is separate from Messages. I don't think Voice can do RCS which is odd considering how their pushing it on Android.

That is one thing that I absolutely dislike -- sticking everything as a part of one big browser. I prefer individual apps that I can control separately, than use a monolithic application. :-(

You can, Chat has its own full page that loads when you click it from the apps menu and you can disable the sidebar in Gmail in the settings. The same was true of GTalk/Hangouts before Chat