I don't find Chat unsuable at all. My only team related emails are bug updates which are filtered. I feel group chats on Chat is a better UX than old Hangouts.
I've been using Google for years. These days I literally do not know what Chat is. I'm not sure if it's what I'm using, if it's embedded in what I'm using, if it's one of the embedded things I ignore, etc. (I use Google Voice, which on android I think they tried to say was chat at some point? But none of the strings seem to say that. And then in gmail, is that Chat, the thing they keep pretending anyone cares about the 5th time they rebranded and split/combined/deprecated/invented?
I think they've gone beyond making it unusable, I literally don't know how I'd find it if I wanted to, and they've long since convinced me that I shouldn't try.
FWIW, chat.google.com wasn't rolled out for @gmail.com accounts. It was being rolled out in Google Workspace/gSuite. And this announcement rolled it out to @gmail.com accounts. Old Hangouts is replaced by Chat for text and Meet for video. You can access it at chat.google.com.
Voice is for texting with your GVoice number. It used to be possible to integrate with Hangouts but it's not integrated with Chat. Chat just works with gmail/Workspace account and not a phone number. Voice works with a phone number.
Curious how y'all find the group chats you want in the bajillions that Googlers must have by now created, given that there are exactly 0 controls on who can create groups and no ability to delete or hide them...
Oh yeah. That can be a pain. Usually someone just invites or links me to the group chat. I rarely try to find a group chat using the search but I know that it's not the best.
