Google is great in a lot of ways (and creepy and invasive in a lot of others), but I cannot for the life of me understand why so many of their services seem to be on an endless treadmill of retirement, replacement, and rebranding.

There was Google TV, which was replaced with Android TV, which was kind-of-but-not-really replaced by Chromecast, but then I've heard that Chromecast it going away and actually being replaced by Android TV.

There was Google Talk, which became Google Chat or Gchat, which was then replaced with Hangouts, which was originally a feature of the now-defunct Google Plus. But now there's a new Google Chat that's a business-oriented thing, I guess?

I never figured out what Google Allo or Buzz or Wave were, but I think they were all social media or messaging (or social media AND messaging?) services too.

Then there was Google Drive, which still exists as a service, but if you're an individual, the app you use to sync your files is now called Backup and Sync (catchy!), while the business version is now Drive File Stream (even catchier!)

Yeah, that's another one. Google Meet is apparently just a spinoff of the video call part of Google Hangouts, which is supposed to go away but still hasn't for some reason. https://twitter.com/SubvCopyEd/status/1294411705053843461

And Google Meet is apparently different from Google Duo, which is an entirely different video calling app.

Oh, and I forgot about Google Video, which they created a year before they bought YouTube, but which they kept for several more years before migrating all of its content to YouTube.

And of course there were all the Nexus phones and other devices which suddenly became Pixel for some reason, and the Google Home Hub which became the Google Nest Hub, though the other Google Home products are still called Google Home.

And lest we forget:

*moment of silence for Google Reader* https://twitter.com/skycornerless/status/1294411910847373312

Also, remember the time Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion and then turned around and sold the company (minus some patents) to Lenovo two years later for $2.9 billion? Those must have been some very valuable patents.

I owned a second-gen Moto X from the Google era, and it was a fantastic phone—fast as an S5 but for quite a bit less, with a clean version of Android and great ergonomics.

My current phone is a Moto X4 from the Lenovo era, and it's a decent phone but decidedly less great.