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?"