https://music-assistant.io/
Music Assistant is a music library manager for your offline and online music sources which can easily stream your favourite music to a wide range of supported players and be combined with the power of Home Assistant!
Google used to use the term beta a lot in there past. I don't understand why Stadia wasn't tag with the beta or early access this would of put the problems and the media more at ease until the product was stable
Media and Message apps fit in a framework that google has provided this allows them to update the android auto UI with no changes for any of these apps.
they haven't done this for map apps yet but Waze is now supported. but this took a long time.
it could be possible there building the framework for maps just there not ready for 3rd party's to access it
the internet is quick to judge but you have to walk before you run. this is a system that will run on millions of cars and in the future possibly billions.
with Android Automotive OS its going to be part of the car so getting this correct is a big deal you want it supportable well into the future.
too many people are thinking that a one fit solution can work for everyone but Google are massive and they can afford to have many product to suit their customers needs, Microsoft also has this with Skype, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams.
Skype will always be consumer focus and it has built in video.
Skype for Business a old product bad UI that was called Lync is being replace with Teams.
Teams Fantastic product but i don't ever see consumers using it business its great check it out if you have 365.
and don't forget microsoft has there old system call messenger that they merge into Skype.
now we look at Google also all these new chat systems are build on WebRTC, HTTP2.0 & QUIC all built to be fast.
anything in G Suite has a requirements of Google Account, high SLA, standards compliance & data retention
Hangout Meet - be a easy video chat app
Hangout Chat - be a group/teams chat app
both Allo and Duo work without any account creation all you need is a SMS verify and it works off a mobile number for area of the world that don't bother with creating accounts or maybe some beginnings of supporting a imessage type service so this would be a big change to Google whole systems and thinking around how that layers in with other services.
but there now gearing up to add the Google account layer with the latest teardown its coming and soon as the new smart display depend on duo having google account
Allo - be a modern consumer chat app
Duo - be a modern video app
Hangouts - be legacy
now this is what i would do to merge the system once they add Google Account support then i can see they will be able to build a layer to import legacy hangout chats into the allo system and in the end maybe even swapping out the hangout backed with allo's two different views/UI on a centralize base. this would keep the internet happy and most people would be no wiser but then allo people can talk with hangout people and the two apps would be 100% feature the same just a bit of paint difference.