Microsoft keeps shooting own goals such as buying Skype, renaming the popular Lync product (not be confused with several other Microsoft products also named after corrupted versions of the work "link") to "Skype for Business" just to make everybody confused.

Then later "Microsoft Teams" comes out of nowhere. Maybe I live behind a rock but I see people using all kinds of chat programs, and all kinds of Microsoft software, but I've never known anybody who uses "Microsoft Teams" and I wonder if it is as popular as "Hipchat" but backed by a company which gives in more benign neglect than Atlassian can afford to.

One constant is that chat programs are constantly churning, another is that every chat program seems to get worse over time, the third is the level of functionality that chat programs have had since early 2000s. (I helped reskin Paltalk for Brazil and it seemed to do everything that Skype and Facebook Messenger did today) The fourth is that consumers and vendors seem to learn nothing from past successes and failures.

(e.g. AIM was great, but AOL failed. Chat clients are usually an attempt to lock you into using services from a particular company, so whether they "succeed" or "fail" has nothing to do with how they succeed or fail, but just a function of what state in the vendor lock-in cycle they are in.)

Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram are all run by Facebook and have variously incompatible messaging capabilities.

Sure, but Facebook didn't name them Facebook Groupchat, Facebook Chat and Facebook Talk.

People actually understand the difference between the various Facebook products, unlike the Google products.

When I ask people what Instagram is for, they always describe it as Facebook, but without all the crap. Or as Facebook with posts sorted chronologically. Doesn't make me want to sign up with it, and end up with another Facebook.

For Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instragram they all started as distinct platforms and companies, so the question would be should they consolidate. IMO Facebook has made the right decision not to consolidate, as individuals bought into those platforms pre-acquisition and don't necessarily see themselves as part of a homogenous Facebook customer base.

> ...none of those other "competitors" seem to feel the need to have 4 different products in order to operate in this space.

So? Google wants to make more money than they do. What's wrong with that?

Also what's wrong with "me-too"-ism? Pepsi exists even though Coca-Cola is fine. Verizon exists even though AT&T works. What you call "me-too"-ism, I just call capitalism and healthy competition.

Google's strategy has nothing to do with ad dollars or anyone being "bored" and everything to do with making money in a different market.

You're basically arguing that Google shouldn't build more products to try to make more money? But that's not how public corporations work. Making money is their whole point.

I'll be honest, I personally find it hard to believe that the P/L for Hangouts Meet is remotely positive.

It's not even a standalone product, it's part of G Suite.

Any complete business suite has to have videoconferencing.

Do you genuinely think the P/L for G Suite isn't remotely positive, or will be over the next decade?

Remember it's the primary competitor to MS Office, and has been around for nearly a decade and a half at this point.