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The underlying premise (“ bring together the functions of several standalone apps“) seems more like our airsend app (https://www.airsend.io). Oh well :)
Sounds an awful lot like Google is getting ready to repeat the mistakes of Yahoo! by chasing seemingly hot markets instead of finding ways to better support the customers and products they already have.
How so? This is an enterprise play. An integrated, fully featured chat app are table stakes to be considered against the likes of Microsoft Office.

This isn't chasing some hot fad.

An enterprise play is a good idea, but Google has been messing around with the branding and implementation of their consumer products while chasing this strategy. I am reminded of Yahoo! building what was basically an enormous social network with Chat, Profiles, Groups, and Mail and then throwing much of it away to start over when the first actual social networking sites started to get big.

Most people are already confused about Hangouts vs GChat vs "the chat in Gmail," and I fear this will only get worse.

And then will deprecate the service because its not adding the desired $$ to AdSense and you will be left high and dry :)
Anyone remember Pidgin chat client?

I loved having a single UI with all the various chat services I used. Looks like they are still in active development too: https://pidgin.im/

I wish I could do something similar today with iMessage, Hangouts, and WhatsApp.

In case you missed: Pidgin has many plugins including for Whatsapp.
I miss Google Chat. I miss using it on any platform I wanted. Those were the days. Back when xmpp was in full swing.
You would have to be an absolute fool to put your business on a Google messaging platform. If you hope your business lasts a decade you’ll likely be forced into a major platform switch 3-4 times.

Not to mention Google is essentially a spyware company and you shouldn’t trust them with your business data.