Google could have launched and positioned its Hangouts to take WhatsApp on. In short, WhatsApp’s game was simply to grow as fast as possible so that it could be sold off for a great deal of money, which is what happened. Barely three percent of its customer base provided any revenue. WhatsApp’s model is supposedly subscription: but strangely enough, hardly any of its users ever received a request for payment, and those that did, but refused to pay were soon rewarded with offers to use the service gratis.

Mysteriously, it has proved itself a lean, mean, fighting machine able to hold its ground.

Why hasn’t Google used Gmail and Google Hangouts - which recently incorporated P2P connections in its protocol to improve call quality and speed - to go head to head with WhatsApp? After all, pretty much everybody knows that WhatsApp is a small company with a staff of barely 50 and not much engineering savvy (it wasn’t even able to build a half-way decent encryption protocol). Looking for greater privacy, the under-30s are leaving the social networks by the horde and turning to closed groups made up of friends, family, or work colleagues, and that can often accommodate dozens of people, making them a comfortable, safe place to comment on news, send videos of kittens, or just chat. Instant messaging is the communication choice for growing numbers of people. Good news for WhatsApp, but I have to confess I find it paradoxical that Google has not been able to do better against such a clearly deficient service as WhatsApp. WhatsApp and Gmail have just announced that they each now have more than one billion users. WhatsApp vs Hangouts: comparing apples with oranges?

Viber vs whatsapp vs hangouts