Facebook is a better messaging platform than SMS, for me, because I have friends spread across the globe that I can contact with a simple internet connection.
You can use Hangouts for SMS and 'HoIP' still, but they made it a lot more difficult. I'm really not the target demographic for messaging applications, but I am baffled by how Google has handled Hangouts (which seemed to be incredibly popular and worked better 10 years ago - I'm avoiding the name changes over the years because I was able to use the same account continuously), Allo and Duo (I have never tried either and don't understand what they are trying to do).
It honestly feels like Google is actively trying to sabotage themselves for messaging. I just don't get it.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and blame google plus, wonder how much long term damage that did. Put off tons of people (aka me) from even trying these services during the time that they should have been gaining traction, and left everything in disarray as they tied, and then tried to untie, all of their services together.
I think duo is the right idea, where making a video call should be just as easy as making a phone call, but so far every time I've tried to use has been met with "install what? can't we just facetime?"
Internally, how do Googlers feel about its messaging "strategy"? I've heard the explanation that Google encourages the schizophrenia with the "launch a product to build your promo packet" philosophy, but that doesn't seem to cause issues in other product lines. But the strategy also certainly can't be intentional, since Google's squandered an obvious chance at dominating the messaging space and is teetering on irrelevancy there.
> You can use Hangouts for SMS and 'HoIP' still, but they made it a lot more difficult.
Yes, it's exactly that 'more difficult' I mean by 'you can't bundle them any more'. SMS and 'HoIP' with the same contact used to appear in the same conversation, but they removed the feature - disabling it for those with it enabled a priori, and disabling others from enabling it.
