[bingobob]

too many people are thinking that a one fit solution can work for everyone but Google are massive and they can afford to have many product to suit their customers needs, Microsoft also has this with Skype, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams.

Skype will always be consumer focus and it has built in video.

Skype for Business a old product bad UI that was called Lync is being replace with Teams.

Teams Fantastic product but i don't ever see consumers using it business its great check it out if you have 365.

and don't forget microsoft has there old system call messenger that they merge into Skype.

now we look at Google also all these new chat systems are build on WebRTC, HTTP2.0 & QUIC all built to be fast.

anything in G Suite has a requirements of Google Account, high SLA, standards compliance & data retention

Hangout Meet - be a easy video chat app Hangout Chat - be a group/teams chat app

both Allo and Duo work without any account creation all you need is a SMS verify and it works off a mobile number for area of the world that don't bother with creating accounts or maybe some beginnings of supporting a imessage type service so this would be a big change to Google whole systems and thinking around how that layers in with other services.

but there now gearing up to add the Google account layer with the latest teardown its coming and soon as the new smart display depend on duo having google account

Allo - be a modern consumer chat app Duo - be a modern video app Hangouts - be legacy

now this is what i would do to merge the system once they add Google Account support then i can see they will be able to build a layer to import legacy hangout chats into the allo system and in the end maybe even swapping out the hangout backed with allo's two different views/UI on a centralize base. this would keep the internet happy and most people would be no wiser but then allo people can talk with hangout people and the two apps would be 100% feature the same just a bit of paint difference.