Google Talk to Google Hangouts ~ A walkthrough

Few months back at the Google I/O conference, Google has announced about their replacement of Talk platform with Google Hangouts. Hangouts, previously known as Google talk is an IM (instant messaging) platform offered by Google. In my personal opinion, I would recommend using this to anyone rather than other IM services. Because, unlike others Google always consider its users & their privacy by providing a great service at all the time.

What I love about google hangouts is;

• New colorful view, UI structure, easy navigation on receiving & changing the screens.
• Users can simply swipe to archive the conversations.
• Unlike other IM’s, Google Hangout can hold up-to nine users on a conversation (which includes the video IM).
• Users can see the last message that was seen by the receiver and if they’re paying attention their avatar is illuminated but when they leave it will grey out.
• Hangouts also prevents users from disabling “chat history,” which archives chats to the user’s Gmail account. If a user doesn’t want the chat accessible through Gmail, they must disable the “hangout history” for each individual contact.

Nevertheless, I would like to give my opinion as I see few things are missing in this new hangout.

• Online indicator (green line) that should show status for the contact, is just a line underneath the name and difficult to see if the person is online or not.
• Switching between our own status is not possible anymore (e.g.: available, away, idle.. etc). But users like myself need it frequently. Also the custom status message (e.g.: out of office, in a meeting.. etc).
• Hangout displays almost all frequent users that I’ve contacted but no the users who’re online. As a user, I don’t always need frequent contacted users nor offline users. So it is better that we can see currently available list.
• All above said applies to the mobile device too.

All over Google Hangouts wins its users attraction though there are bugs. And I hope, Google will polish up the hangouts with what I’ve said as the same were pointed out by users in Google product forums group. Let us hope for a positive feedback from the team & let us enjoy hanging out.

[box=download] More: Common FAQ’s about Hangout, Google group for Hangouts [/box]