Remember nudges and birthday reminders in Google Messages? Me neither. Launched with little fanfare in March 2022, these features have become the latest casualties in Google’s ever-growing graveyard of “killed by Google” products. Nudges were supposed to be helpful, gently reminding us to reply to messages that might have slipped through the cracks. Birthday reminders, well, they did the birthday reminder thing. The screenshot below shows Nudges in Messages settings.
While neither feature was revolutionary, their swift removal highlights a concerning trend at Google: a launch-and-abandon approach to products and features. Remember Inbox, the ill-fated attempt to replace Gmail? Or Google Plus, the social media ghost town? Nudges and birthday reminders in Messages join these products in the Google graveyard with a lifespan of about two years. As you can see below, Nudges is gone in the latest Messages app.
This constant churn is frustrating for users. Why invest time in learning a new feature if it might vanish before you even get the hang of it? It creates a sense of impermanence and discourages users from fully engaging with new offerings. Google needs to get a handle on this. Otherwise, users might become hesitant to even try new features, fearing they’ll be ghosts before they even have a chance to be useful.
Meanwhile, Google Messages is rolling out a redesigned audio recorder with noise cancellation and a new feature called Voice Moods for beta testers. Voice Moods lets you add an animated emoji background to your voice message to show how you’re feeling. It’s currently only available in RCS conversations. The redesigned recorder, on the other hand, lets you record, stop, restart, and attach voice messages. It’s available to all users on the latest Google Messages beta. The stable version might already have it.
Furthermore, Google Messages is close to launching a new feature called Selfie GIF. This lets you record a 3-second video clip of yourself and automatically convert it into a GIF to share in your chats. There are two ways to access it: tapping the “+” icon and selecting Selfie GIF, or by holding down the camera icon. You can preview your creation before sending it. This feature is currently in the latest beta version of Messages and might be released very soon, possibly even next week at Google I/O.
