Google Chat review: As awesome as a Slack clone, but as good as a consumer chat app

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Zoom/Google Chat, in just some of the many form factors.

Google Chat was officially launched to consumers recently, and that means it’s time to get back to everyone’s favorite topic: Google’s messaging services!

Google Chat is the latest in Google’s long and sweet series of (usually) short-lived messaging apps, but this one is a little more important than most others. While the “~2 years and under” club is full of losers – like Google Wave (2009-2010), Buzz (2010-2011), Disco (2011-2012), Google+ Messenger (2011-2013), and Spaces (2016) – 2017), Allo (2016-2019), and YouTube Messages (2017-2019) – one of the consecutive lines is the original Google Talk users. Google Talk was Google’s inaugural chat app that started in 2005 (often informally called ‘GChat’). In 2013 Google Talk got an in-place upgrade for Google Hangouts, which was (mostly) compatible with Google’s OG chat service. Now, Google Hangouts users will seamlessly upgrade to Google Chat, resulting in 16 years of turbulent but functional Google Messaging.

These days, all I do seems to be spreading doom and gloom about recent Google shutdowns or launching the messaging app when it arrives. But know up front that Google Chat is really, really good! The need to be compatible with Google Hangouts – the best messaging app from Google to date – means that it is also a worthy successor to Google Hangouts. This app has plenty of customer support, online accounts instead of the limited phone number system paid for by Google Pay and Google Allo, and a seamless transition for your existing chats and contacts. It’s not quite as featured as the more stable chat systems that have been around for years, but if you’re looking for the basics across multiple devices, this version 1.0 of Google Chat isn’t really bad.

Google recently chaired some of the Waste Transfer Service’s transitions. But when the inevitable Google Hangouts shutdown arrives (date still set for later), our time with Google Chat so far suggests it won’t be a huge disaster.

Ad organization first: Why Google Chat really has a chance of survival

You could fill a graveyard with Google’s previous instant messaging apps, but – and I can’t believe I’m going to write this one – I really think Google Chat has a better chance of survival than its many predecessors. The biggest factor is “money”. Although Google’s machine guns release messaging app versions, Google has never released a messaging app with a solid monetization plan yet. Google Chat changes that.

Google Chat originated from the Google Workspace division (formerly known as “G Suite”) as a competitor to Slack. Google charges a fee for Workspace, which makes it one of the most stable branches of Google’s line of products. Earning money usually means surviving, and Google Chat will earn money as part of the workspace.

Technically Hangouts did some time as part of the Google Workspace package as well, but I’m reporting Hangouts eventually dying under the “Not Invented Here” syndrome. Hangouts and Google Chat are both Google products, but the different Google sections don’t work together or coordinate in the end. This is part of the reason we have so many messaging apps to start with. Hangouts was born out of the Google+ Project, which was the only time Google worked together as a company (bribes were needed to make this happen). When Google+ died, Hangouts became an orphan.

Hangouts was eventually adopted by the G Suite division, but it never really met the needs of businesses, so it was deprecated.

Slack’s user count has grown since 2014, one year after Hangouts was developed.

In the years since Google Hangouts launched, Slack has become a tyrant. An enterprise chat app is the normal way businesses now communicate, especially with working from home becoming an increasingly true reality. If you want to put a dollar amount on the value of a good enterprise chat app, it’s obviously $27.7 billion, which is the amount Salesforce paid to buy Slack in December. Google’s perennial rival Microsoft has jumped into the enterprise chat market as well, launching Microsoft Teams in 2017. The difference, believe it or not, is bigger than Slack is now.

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You could argue that Slack does not compete with Google Workspace, as they often complement each other. Microsoft Office 365 definitely competes with Google Workspace, though, and once Microsoft Teams took off, Office 365 had a competitive enterprise chat app and Google Workspace didn’t. Google Workspace is a major enterprise product from Google. You need to compete in the enterprise chat, and its chosen warrior is Google Chat.

We’re covering the launch of Google Chat for consumers, though, which will eventually suck in an army of consumer users when it replaces Google Hangouts. So why is Google Chat also an enterprise chat app? Nobody really knows outside of Google. Google’s actions over the past 16 years have indicated that it does not believe that consumer messaging is a valuable service worthy of a continued, stable investment. Individual employees start a project, but if they leave or get a promotion, nobody picks up the mantle and the project dies. Often, no one in the company grieves or even notices the death. This is in contrast to services such as ads, search, Gmail, Chrome, or Android, which can have many personnel changes yet will continue to function. considered important.

I want to emphasize that this is the opposite of what most of Google’s competitors think. iMessage, for example, is certainly a pillar of the Apple ecosystem, and has been described by Apple as “one of the most important applications in the mobile environment.” But Google’s logic seems to be that “consumer messaging does not show ads and therefore does not deserve long-term support”. If we follow this line of thinking, supporting a free consumer chat app over your profitable enterprise chat app makes some sense.

Being “enterprise first” also explains some of Google Chat’s more unusual UI decisions. Some parts of the user interface are the same because that provides a rough version of Slack. The rest of us have to deal with it, but it’s practically weird.

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