Ask HN: How did Google botch messaging/video/hangouts so badly?
by davidw on Hacker News.
Several years ago, from within Gmail, I could: * Make a phone call * Send an SMS * Send a Google chat * Start a video call with my parents Now, all of this has been split up, and to start a video call, I have to start a video and send an email inviting someone. SMS has been split up into a separate web app that won’t work without my phone being present. How did it come to pass that they took an easy, integrated system and mangled it so badly? I mean, it wasn’t perfect, but it mostly just worked, and was easy to use.