I could understand consolidation when you’re as big as google and lot of these one-off apps (Duo, Allo, Podcasts, Measure, Hangouts, etc.) are all clearly just testing grounds for either specific features eventually destined for their mainline apps, or just neat ideas that never caught on and couldn’t be monetized enough to warrant keeping the service alive.

The real issue is: they almost NEVER actually make the “consolidated” app reach feature parity with the one it gets folded into.