This is generally a good chronological recap, however, the confusing state seems to arise from an unnatural focus on finding drama / attributing motives / a lens of corporations personified playing chess with full information at all times, and then getting confused about what these inferred chess moves mean.
Ex. Some MVNOs haven't updated their iOS cellular with apple yet because it's an obscure technical thing for a feature most of them don't know exists, yet, for an OS that came out...3 weeks ago? It's not confusing or indicative of some grand plan on anyone's behalf
My flag went up for "need to read this closely, they're substituting facts for lengthy contextual verbiage that feels true" as soon as it's talking about gTalk doing a video call a year before FaceTime. The implication that this went away, and more importantly, the implication Google "lost" to FaceTime, and even more importantly, framing not buying WhatsApp as a "miss", are unambiguous signs of immature commentary.
Smaller aside, not intended as a singular reason to find it lacking basis: I'm no Google fan, but over the years, I've learned to ignore handwaving about how the Nth rebrand of hangouts was somehow leagues ahead and then disappeared and there was a brand new one that lost meaningful core features.
I get the Google service stuff is confusing and not good stuff, but truth is you could start a gChat Gmail Chat gTalk etc. in 2009 and have it in your Google Chat in 2024.
Ex. Some MVNOs haven't updated their iOS cellular with apple yet because it's an obscure technical thing for a feature most of them don't know exists, yet, for an OS that came out...3 weeks ago? It's not confusing or indicative of some grand plan on anyone's behalf
My flag went up for "need to read this closely, they're substituting facts for lengthy contextual verbiage that feels true" as soon as it's talking about gTalk doing a video call a year before FaceTime. The implication that this went away, and more importantly, the implication Google "lost" to FaceTime, and even more importantly, framing not buying WhatsApp as a "miss", are unambiguous signs of immature commentary.
Smaller aside, not intended as a singular reason to find it lacking basis: I'm no Google fan, but over the years, I've learned to ignore handwaving about how the Nth rebrand of hangouts was somehow leagues ahead and then disappeared and there was a brand new one that lost meaningful core features.
I get the Google service stuff is confusing and not good stuff, but truth is you could start a gChat Gmail Chat gTalk etc. in 2009 and have it in your Google Chat in 2024.