Right now Apple iOS marketshare is increasing: it's reached 60% in the US and an amazing 87% among teenagers! (Who tend to "stick" with a platform even after they become adults.) And while there are many features that are driving the push towards iOS (it's not just messaging!) the dominance of iMessage is definitely one feature people [particularly younger ones] care very much about. And while fixing messaging might not be the only problem here, it's relatively "inexpensive" to run messaging correctly compared to the cost of fixing things after your OS market share crosses a tipping point.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/09/06/apple-cras...
and in any case, throwing out 20 services in a row to kill them is certain to damage your brand.
there was a time where google was synonimous with free and unavailable features (gmail, gmaps) and now google is that weird ever changing stream of A/B testing customer distracting devices. (youtube just flubbered their UI in the most spectacular manner btw)
They've only ever made substantial profit from ads, YouTube (which they acquired), and possibly Workspace or Cloud. The last time I looked at their filings, they weren't transparent about which businesses are profitable.
This isn't a company that's had a coherent identity or strategy.
iMessage is important to Apple because it's an exclusive social network that only Apple devices can access.
Slack is important because it's a backbone of a business SaaS ecosystem.
But Hangouts was never going to have either of these functions.