I always used to use Hangouts as my default chat app for friends. We had a big DnD group chat on it. But we migrated to WhatsApp when Google said they were going to kill hangouts and never looked back.
Why would I trust Google with my chats when they constantly abandon/kill off their best tools. We've now moved to Signal and I'm expecting to stay there for a long time.
I quite liked the rest of the Furies series. Didn't you enjoy them?