Either combine everything in one app, or don't

First there was Talk. Quite successful, quite good. Then came Hangouts, Google+ Messenger and Voice. None of them ever the success Google hoped it would have become. And Talk was neglected.

Then came the integration. Talk, +Messenger and Voice were to some extend integrated in Hangouts. But the app was and is too slow. And in the meantime, others have won the market already. Google lost the battle for the messaging app and did it to themselves.

Then came sms and mms integration in Hangouts. Smart, one app for different means of communication. This could the future. But then Google developed the new Messenger app. Just for sms and mms. You can still use Hangouts for this, but Google advices to use the new Messenger.

Soon YouTube and Google Photo's will have chat functionalities build in. And later this year Allo will be launched. Build around your phone, not web based, not cross platform, exactly why Whatsapp is still crap. And Duo, a video chat app will be launched. Alongside Hangouts, which started out as a video chat app, not instead off.

Please Google, make up your mind. Either build one application for all means of communication, chat, voice, video, file sharing, or build a lean and mean application for each individual means of communication. I don't mind switching from Chat to Video if that means the apps work. I do mind having two or more apps from Google to chose from for chat. Or for video. And please don't build apps around phone numbers. Make that an option, not a prerequesite to sign up with a phone number.