Corporate side - google will always provide something that is vaguely functional under whatever name/brand they call it this month
Personal side - I'll use whatsapp/fb messenger cause that's stable. Everyone's on it too...because surprise it's not a complete shitshow.
As a whole I've given up on google fielding usable chat. Even sending a screenshot over hangouts doesn't work depending on which of the 4 clients (browser extension, cell, browser separate and gmail integrated) you're on to this day. At one point the official corporate solution rolled out to 10s of thousands of people - I kid you not - was a hacked together save it on drive, share folder silently & send link over hangouts, click on link & open in google drive to display picture.
How does a company manage to ship something as sophisticated as GCP but can't get this right? Clearly they're not incompetent so wtf is going on there?
Can you think of another major social networking service without Direct Messaging of some kind?
Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Flickr, Snapchat, Tumblr, Pintrest, and the list goes on, they all have DM functionality.
That sort of choice is disappointing because it's always nice to be able to contact content creators. Without direct messaging it's more like cable television where you're just there to watch and feedback isn't welcome.
Perhaps that's the idea here - YouTube will be the cable television of the Internet era. Obscure channels aren't recommended by the algorithm and the channels YouTube deems most profitable will be suggested.
