Google's Confusing Approach to Social Networking

Not long back, I wrote "Google's strategy is to make two of everything and wait and watch as to what sticks and kill the other," but of late it so happens that it's taking this mantra to an extreme, resulting in an increasingly disconnected ecosystem within Googleverse. Not to mention, potentially ending up confusing the end user. Recently it unveiled three different ways to save links, each separately to Google Keep, Google Inbox and a new thing called Google Save. And no, they don't talk to each other. If you thought that was bad enough, things are even worse when it comes to its confused and fragmented approach to social networking, messaging and (micro)blogging. So let's take stock of the situation, shall we? What do we have?

• Hangouts, Google's long-forgotten SMS-slash-instant messenger (also the chat app that replaced Google Talk)
• Messenger, default SMS app for Android with rumoured support for RCS (Rich Communication Services)
• Project Fi and Google Voice, with its support for telephony and messaging
• Google+ and its accompaniments Collections and Communities, aka the search giant's official social network
• Blogger, which is this very blog you are reading
• Invite-only mobile-only chat app Who's Down
• YouTube's rumoured in-app messenger to converse around YouTube videos
• Google Spaces, a new Pinterest'y way to write, find and share articles, videos and images about any topic
• Also, Google Allo and Duo, the new instant messaging/video platform to replace Hangouts

Google Spaces (Image courtesy: Google Blog)

A+ for the thought that has gone into the design, but my big question is how is Google Spaces any different from Google+ Collections? And why is Google expending so much time and effort on something this redundant? And why can't it be baked into an already established (social-media) offering? And why can't it make Hangouts the overarching chat layer across all its services? My questions are endless, but I really hope Google has a legitimate reason other than releasing endless mutations of products that does the same thing and throwing them at the wall to see what sticks.