Seriously. I somehow ended up using all of them, and I honestly don't know what's going on anymore. I thought my Talk got merged into Hangouts, if I start a chat in Gmail it's sometimes findable in my iOS hangouts app, and sometimes it's not. A while ago the Voice team asked me to merge Voice with Hangouts, which I did because clearly the service was dead. This seemed like a plan... your SMS chats are just chats in Hangouts and in addition to calling other Hangouts users you can call phone numbers, but we're keeping the Voice app & site around for legacy users. Fine. But in January they released an upgrade to the Voice apps with this gem:

If you currently use Hangouts for your Google Voice communication, there’s no need to change to the new apps, but you might want to try them out as we continue to bring new improvements.

W.T.F? Don't bring me into your internal office politics...

Then there's Allo because with all the above they made it too complicated to chat with someone or something. Also Duo, because video calling was completely missing from the offerings above (it wasn't).

I just use hangouts on all platforms, and it seems to work well. Although I did have to install "hangouts dialer" on android to make phones calls from Hangouts. Not sure if that's still required.

Google: please just leave hangouts alone!

I agree 100%. I'm frankly still not certain if Google talk and G-chat are even the same thing. I've used G-chat for a long time, but don't remember the name being changed.

Also, regarding branding: even overlooking the shell-game Google is playing with regards to moving features around (SMS => Voice, SMS => Hangouts, SMS => ?), the branding was confusing from the outset:

- Google Chat (GChat) - Google Talk - Google Voice

These might as well be synonyms.

GChat/Google Chat were never official branding question any time. Only users used those names.

You might want to reconsider that: https://support.google.com/chat/answer/159495?hl=en

Part of the confusion is that they kept around the old clients and protocols. There is also a lot of confusion between the different apps and the platform.

Google Talk is the original XMPP based chat system and was known informally as Gchat or Gtalk. There were web and desktop clients. Hangouts is the "new" proprietary messaging system from 2013. Google Talk and Hangouts are integrated at least for text messages but Hangouts adds lots of features like group video chat. Google Talk provides XMPP protocol access for federation and third-party clients.

Hangouts app on Android could do Hangouts, local SMS, and Google Voice SMS.

I find it interesting that there is less confusion about Apple Messages even though it was renamed from iChat to iMessages to Messages. The app also supports both SMS and iMessage protocol. In addition, iChat supported XMPP and third party clients until was shut down.

> find it interesting that there is less confusion about Apple Messages

The reason people aren't confused is because Apple just renamed the app on people's iPhones but didn't screw anything up for them. They were never forced to switch from one app to another app, never had multiple apps that did roughly the same thing with competing standards, and they didn't migrate users from one platform to another losing data in the process.

I'd say google has entered into a post modern era of chat. I don't think there's anything they could announce that would actually mean something to the generally public, there's too many overlapping brands with overlapping functionality.

They're like the 1980's GM of chat products right now: too many overlapping products cannibalizing their own userbase.

I mostly agree, but there is one thing that end-users are dying for. Truly federated chat services and open standards. Its the only thing that anybody could do differently to really stand out above the rest.

All I know is that every now and again I notice a bunch of notifications of missed conversations in Gmail, sorry Inbox, or maybe it was in Gmail, and once again swear and tell people it's a bad idea to try to get ahold of me that way because odds are it will take ages before I see it.

I'll never trust a Google messaging app because of that mess, and frankly I'm getting increasingly frustrated with Gmail/Inbox too and will probably move off it soon.

Google is a feudally organized collection of fiefdoms and this shows in their product strategy.

Really makes me wonder their long term survivability being that way. It doesn't seem to be working well for them.

All I know at this point is that I'll keep using Hangouts and when Google eventually kills it, I'll never use another Google messenger again.

just curious, why would anyone outside China use censoring spyware like Wechat?

Don't forget Messages!

And is that the same as or different from "Google Messenger" (an SMS app)?

For bonus confusion, the Google Messenger icon just says "Messenger" and is nearly indistinguishable from Facebook Messenger, a completely different system. Better keep track of which blue speech bubble is which.

It seems Messenger was just renamed Messages, probably for this very reason.

I feel like Google has a bunch of teams working independently on things like this and somehow don't have to check with some central assurance party before releasing their competing products.