Admittedly, I’m aggravated about being pushed to switch from hangouts, and that’s going to affect my view of GoogleChat, but dear god why can’t I put group chats and DMs in the same tab? Switching back and forth is frustrating and confusing. It’s also hard to tell who’s said what, and implementing literally any system for that would make a huge difference. On a less important note, I’d like to be able to assign a photo to a group chat so the icon isn’t just a letter (if there is a way to do this, I couldn’t find it, and I Looked).
On the plus side, having the docs and sheets we’ve shared in a tab for group chats is really cool (I’d love to be able to see photos, too, as well as have this option for DMs), it infinitely easier to search than hangouts was, and there is dark mode integration.
Overall, it’s fine, I guess? It feels very similar to Microsoft Teams, which is to say not ideal for a casual messaging app but probably a good option for work.