Yeah I remember early years gchat all my social network was using that for chatting, because you always had the email open anyway when on a browser and a chat right there was just too convenient.
Also, centralized chat history! Very few did that at the time and most had massive issues with unread tracking.
The moment I went on mobile and tried hangout it was dead to me. Read notification duplicates, phantom notifications for read messages, long startup times, and group everything came mich much later
Everyone jumped ship at that moment. The hangout app was THAT bad early years, and even after quite some time later real usability issues were never fixed.
Also, centralized chat history! Very few did that at the time and most had massive issues with unread tracking.
The moment I went on mobile and tried hangout it was dead to me. Read notification duplicates, phantom notifications for read messages, long startup times, and group everything came mich much later
Everyone jumped ship at that moment. The hangout app was THAT bad early years, and even after quite some time later real usability issues were never fixed.