Signal works well. key exchange happens transparently. group size is limited to 150 https://support.signal.org/hc/... video chat is limited to 5 but works well (as do calls). If they are on android they can even set the default text app to signal so they don't need two apps for messaging. I also enjoy having a desktop client. My gripes with signal are basically the tradeoff between privacy and usability. they are first and foremost trying to deliver a private messaging app so there are some unintuitive tradeoffs. conversation history does not transfer to a new device (like your desktop client or to a new group member) and moving to a new device requires manual transfer of messages. see the docs. I also wish they would accept the idea that image/video transfer between people is common AND the viewing of these files is not necessarily limited to mobile. they compress these files to limit server load to a size that is acceptable on a 6" screen. this is usually still better than mms but could be better IMHO. oh, and media sent has to be be explicitly downloaded to your device to be accessible to other apps on the phone (to save or forward it to someone on a different app, for example). all told, these are design decisions to achieve their goals. if you can accept their frame of mind then all is good. I will keep using it since I have about 15 people on it now. The other obvious choice is Telegram. It works much more like whatsapp. It syncs better between clients and allows 2GB(!) file transfers. its a contentious choice though among privacy-minded folks, specifically because it tries to provide "good enough privacy" with intuitive (read: whatsapp-like) functionality. see https://telegram.org/faq and why e2ee isn't the default: https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Te...

No. Personally I think gmail is the best email experience i've used so the author needs to provide some examples of what he doesn't like. GDocs is trying to compete with MS Office. It's much safer to keep close to the defacto standard for word processing, spreadsheets etc. The average customer just wants an office suite that is similar and compatible to MS and syncs to the cloud. The innovation of gdocs was the cloud part, not the word/spreadsheet processing part. Notion is a completely different app with some awesome innovations. It is also completely overwhelming and not for everyone.