I've been using google-chat/hangouts/hangouts dialer/chat (and no one used duo, and i guess google meet doesn't count despite that kinda being what hangouts became) since launch and i've never seen such an incoherent mess. Pretty much have one user left with whom i use it. I even have an enterprise account so I am an actual customer.<p>Current chat-in-gmail incarnation has many bugs. Messages going missing/24 hour late notifications of messages (that i already read).<p>I can only unfortunately presume bad things about how product decisions are made at google and those who make them and their absolute lack of empathy for "customers" let alone the lack of any strategy. If it wasn't for a couple of golden cows cross subsidising the rest of the company these people would be unemployed.<p>That you have 1bn+ users of gmail and no one (bar one for me) still uses it for chat is a testament to the scale of failure. The best you can take away is that the failure is good ammunition to take to anti-trust hearings - they can't say you used dominance to win that market!