I am nothing short of utterly and completely confused at what this means for people using the consumer-facing Hangouts app right now.
Below is what I outline as "Best-Case Scenario":
* Google introduces Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat as new apps to get
* Current Google Hangouts turns into Allo somehow magically
I am currently a GSuite Free member - and use Hangouts to chat with friends, old coworkers, my wife, etc. I literally have no idea what is going to happen to me.
Merging is probably difficult, but not impossible. No reason that Hangouts couldn't authenticate against your phone number and link the accounts that way, or Allo could add an (optional) google login to link it from the other direction.
There's also the issue of there being no option for non-cellular devices to participate in Allo/Duo which limits their utility compared to traditional Hangouts; they're promising a web client but it's all TBD.
As Google tries to be more enterprise focused they will run into problems with customer relations. How am I trust a meeting service where I can't get anyone on the phone if there is a problem? Is it just assumed that Google's reliability makes customer service issues a non-factor? This will be great for tech startups but really a non-starter for 'old guard' types.
> As Google tries to be more enterprise focused they will run into problems with customer relations. How am I trust a meeting service where I can't get anyone on the phone if there is a problem?
Their paid support (separate from the paid service) for gCloud is rolling out a reformed set of offerings that focus very heavily on making sure that companies are able to scale to exactly the level of responsiveness they need [0]; if that's a sign of the general direction of their paid support, it seems to me that they have a handle on the need for support.
Yup, given their tendency to drop products and the lackluster support on the consumer offerings it's hard to not take a wait and see approach.
(And before anyone jumps on me that consumer != enterprise, the culture of support your company sets at your flagship products will trickle down across orgs and cross-pollinate with public perception at the same time).
Am I some kind of idiot, or does neither the blog post or G Suite product page for Meet give any indication of how I could launch Meet? The green CTA "Get started" on the product page takes me to G Suite signup... when I'm already using G suite and signed in. The Log In button takes me to the G Suite Admin console. What.
So much for being 'effortless' to start a connection... It's also not clear to me if this is only for people already using the G-suite or not, as the previous Google Hangouts was open to everyone.
I would really prefer something other than a browser add-on for Hangouts' desktop experience, and, more importantly, receiving incoming calls.
This is the primary reason I don't use Hangouts for incoming calls, despite having reliability issues receiving incoming calls with Skype.
If I close the browser or the Hangouts window with the extension, there's no indicator to tell if it's still running in the background. With no visible feedback, like an icon in the system tray, it leaves me worrying whether it's still working.
From what I tested with it, it'll keep running silently without a tray icon after the browser profile is closed, but the alert for it is a desktop notification without a sound, which is problematic. This slent alert with the window closed disappears if you click anywhere into the notification pop-up except the 'Answer' option. And when you do click "Answer", it doesn't answer, it just opens the Google Hangouts app, which turns on sound and has you click "Answer" a second time..
The solution there, I suppose, is to always have the window open or minimized, taking up important real estate, but I'm a bit opinionated about my workspace and think unnecessary windows should stay closed.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] threadBelow is what I outline as "Best-Case Scenario":
* Google introduces Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat as new apps to get
* Current Google Hangouts turns into Allo somehow magically
I am currently a GSuite Free member - and use Hangouts to chat with friends, old coworkers, my wife, etc. I literally have no idea what is going to happen to me.
I'm aggravated about it.
Their paid support (separate from the paid service) for gCloud is rolling out a reformed set of offerings that focus very heavily on making sure that companies are able to scale to exactly the level of responsiveness they need [0]; if that's a sign of the general direction of their paid support, it seems to me that they have a handle on the need for support.
[0] https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/03/reimagining-sup...
(And before anyone jumps on me that consumer != enterprise, the culture of support your company sets at your flagship products will trickle down across orgs and cross-pollinate with public perception at the same time).
Hangouts Chat: Slack, Teams, etc.
What happens to the "old" Hangouts as included in GSuite? And what of Hangouts in general?
This is the primary reason I don't use Hangouts for incoming calls, despite having reliability issues receiving incoming calls with Skype.
If I close the browser or the Hangouts window with the extension, there's no indicator to tell if it's still running in the background. With no visible feedback, like an icon in the system tray, it leaves me worrying whether it's still working.
From what I tested with it, it'll keep running silently without a tray icon after the browser profile is closed, but the alert for it is a desktop notification without a sound, which is problematic. This slent alert with the window closed disappears if you click anywhere into the notification pop-up except the 'Answer' option. And when you do click "Answer", it doesn't answer, it just opens the Google Hangouts app, which turns on sound and has you click "Answer" a second time..
The solution there, I suppose, is to always have the window open or minimized, taking up important real estate, but I'm a bit opinionated about my workspace and think unnecessary windows should stay closed.