> How many different chat / messaging platforms has Google put out in the last ten years, for example?

This is a good point. They don't iterate on products, at least that's my obvious perception. Instead, they launch competitor products, so in the end they end up pulling more products.

Microsoft has had various tools and programs that they sunset (lynk becoming Skype for business becoming teams) but they do try to make a migration path available (or, arguably, they just put window dressing on the same backends).

There's no migration path from Skype to Microsoft Teams (Personal). Microsoft hasn't picked one as far as I know.

Microsoft similarly has a bunch of duplicate services and products. They've got chat functionality spread across many apps, specifically Teams, Skype, and Xbox. Windows also has widgets in Windows 11 and widgets in Xbox Game Bar. There's also the mess that is developing apps for Windows that has just become Chromium, partially due to Microsoft's own messes.

I think it only seems worse from Google because their product shutdowns don't seem to be tied to financials and if that isn't the case then it makes them unpredictable to us as consumers. Let's remember that Google offers a lot of their products entirely for free. Yet the reason for shutting down Stadia was: "it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected". But how does that make logical sense given that Gmail is free which means it costs money to Google and yet it gets to live forever but Stadia has paying customers and it's not good enough? It seems wild, it initially makes no sense. Unless I'm being more than naive and we the users are quite LITERALLY sold out to advertisers. I always assumed it was a bit exaggerated. But then you still have to wonder why the Stadia users can't be sold out for a profit but the Gmail users can be? Video too expensive? I guess that must be it.

>But how does that make logical sense given that Gmail is free which means it costs money to Google and yet it gets to live forever but Stadia has paying customers and it's not good enough?

>[...]

>Unless I'm being more than naive and we the users are quite LITERALLY sold out to advertisers.

Yes.

Because when you can read every email and store it for data analysis focused on "targeted" ads, you can charge your customers (that's the advertisers, in case you thought it was gmail users) more when they invade your privacy.

Stadia is (or rather, was) chump change[0] at best, and it's a lot harder to spy on everything someone does online when they're just playing games. And pausing game play to show you ads...well, that would certainly never fly.

Remember, Alphabet exists to generate profit for their shareholders -- not to make cool stuff or make their product^W users happy.

If flooding every gmail user's inbox with Goatse every six minutes would increase revenue (and/or stock price), a billion people would be intimately familiar with a stranger's rectum. And GOOG would laugh all the way to the bank.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chump%20change

Edit: Added the missing link, fixed formatting.

> And pausing game play to show you ads...well, that would certainly never fly.

TV has been doing popup ads for years and I am quite sure many Android games also do it. Then you have ads that could be directly embedded into the game play or the games environment itself, a port to Stadia was necessary anyway, so adding ad support could have been done as part of that.

Of course having a streaming platform filled to the brim with the unending amount of cheap ad supported android game clones this would have attracted would have hardly made any sense. No need for Stadia if the games already run natively on the only supported endpoint.

>TV has been doing popup ads for years and I am quite sure many Android games also do it. Then you have ads that could be directly embedded into the game play or the games environment itself, a port to Stadia was necessary anyway, so adding ad support could have been done as part of that.

A fair point, and one I hadn't really considered.

I was thinking along the lines of multiplayer FPS games and the like. If you stop play to show some players ads, they'll be dead/have lost by the time the ad is over. If you stop play for all players to show them ads, I'd expect really high loads on servers as they "customize" the ads by region and PII.

Alternatively (as you imply), using "product placement" ads in-game without interrupting game play, I suppose that could work, no matter how disgusting it might be.

I know your question was rethorical but I'm counting 7 chat / messaging platforms :

Hangouts (2013): A messaging platform that integrated with Google+ and Gmail, offering text, voice, and video communication.

Google Messages (formerly Android Messages, 2014): An SMS, MMS, and RCS messaging application for Android devices.

Google Spaces (2016): A group messaging app that allowed users to create "spaces" for sharing links, images, and other content.

Allo (2016): A messaging app featuring AI-powered smart replies, stickers, and end-to-end encryption.

Duo (2016): A video calling app designed for one-on-one video communication on mobile devices.

Google Meet (2017): A video conferencing service that supports text chat within the meeting interface, mainly targeted at businesses and organizations.

Google Chat (formerly Hangouts Chat, 2018): A team messaging platform integrated with Google Workspace, designed for businesses and organizations.

Bonus : Google Voice had messaging capabilities, YouTube could also go in there, but that's a stretch.

'Only' 7, while legacy AIM still seemed to work better than any of them. You are just making the point for them.

I never realized how much I'd miss AIM, but here we are.