Over the last few days, Google has been announcing a number of new services and enhancements to their offerings. One of these enhancements we are excited about is the new Google Hangouts app. Google Hangouts themselves are not new, and chances are you have seen or used them before, but until this week, accessing this service on your mobile device was not very convenient. With this new stand alone app, it looks like the bar has been raised for chat services. As an Android user, I am particularly excited for this enhancement. Although I do love my Samsung Galaxy 3, the one thing it does not do well, is group chatting. Since the majority of mobile devices out there are still iPhones, whenever I get included on a group chat initiated from an iPhone, it is impossible to follow. All the messages get broken up into separate texts and it turns into a nightmare. I have since remedied this inconvenience by using a 3rd party app known as GroupMe. I admit GroupMe does to a good job when it comes to group texts, but it does not have the ability to sync with the rest of my Google services or offer video chatting, plus the people you are chatting with need to have this app downloaded on their phone.
You may be asking, what about iChat and Skype? Sure, they have fairly good video chatting capability, but if you have tried all 3, it becomes obvious that Google comes out ahead in categories like ease of use, quality and functionality.
This new Google Hangouts app is going to be like text messaging on steroids. The nice thing about texting is the conversation stays in a continuous stream that never stops. No matter how infrequent you talk to someone, you can pick up the conversation from where you left it last. Google Hangouts is going to be just like this, however, now you can throw in fun things like pictures, videos, multiple people, Gchat messages, screen sharing, etc.
If I haven't convinced you of how awesome this new app will be, check out this YouTube video from Google:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/XkpjZ7oA_Qg]
-Mike