

Hangouts Feature Emerges as a Bright Spot for Google+ - whosbacon
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/05/google-hangouts-emerges-as-a-bright-spot/

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buro9
I don't understand what Hangouts is as a product.

I have 1 Gmail account and 2 Google Apps accounts. I use Gtalk and have G+
configured on the Gmail, and 1 domain has Gtalk enabled and G+ disabled, and
the other has both disabled.

This morning I installed Hangouts on my Android as I read the press about how
this would replace Gtalk and figured I should get used to the interface.

What is now displayed confuses me greatly.

Is this G+? How come this app is working on the domains on which it is
disabled?

Is this Gtalk? How come I cannot see/find my Gtalk contacts and my native
Gmail account is showing me what I recognise as circles in the place I would
expect to see my Gtalk contacts.

Where are the archived chats from Gtalk? Still archived in my Gmail? If so,
why does this app say I have no archived chats? Will future archived items be
in my Gmail? Even for the domains in which G+ is disabled (if, as I'm
currently assuming they will actually be in G+ because otherwise it would show
the archived chats that are in my Gmail)?

The native Gmail seems to allow group chat, but the corporate account
doesn't... why?

It asked to confirm my number, but doesn't seem to like the fact that all
three accounts are 1 number... why? I am the same person, several accounts and
1 phone.

I simply don't know what Hangouts is as a product and how the various accounts
I have will work or what options should be set where to make it predictable.

And just to top off the confusion, my girlfriend has clearly added the app
too, as I got a confused email from her and 5 minutes later an email asking me
to install Whats App.

I feel I've gone from something I knew and had control of, to something that
really confuses. I've told my girlfriend to just send me an email or call
me... we can both just understand that.

Is there some epiphany I'm missing?

Edit: This is in the context of someone who is very familiar with the
existing/old offerings and used them a fair bit. It's the 'replacing' bit and
not being able to see anything familiar or old in the new which makes it
confounding.

~~~
seiji
_I don't understand what Hangouts is as a product._

It's another huge marketing/branding failure by Google too. They expect the
world to learn intimate details of all their crazy products that aren't hinted
at by naming. Google loves to hijack short and extremely common words to use
as opaque identifiers for products.

Examples: "Google Wave" -- meaningless unless you read about it extensively.
"Circles" -- takes a while for people to realize it's actually "Google Friend
List Where People Can Exist In Multiple Lists At The Same Time." "Google
Hangouts" -- okay, "hangout" kinda works, but it feels way too casual. I don't
want to "hangout" with most work people. What is it anyway? Video chat? Text
chat? A Skype replacement? Mobile messaging focused? People don't really know
unless they research it first.

~~~
buro9
I get where you're coming from, but those comments sound anti-Google... and as
is clearly evident I choose to use Google for most of my communication, I'm
fairly for-Google.

I think this is perhaps my fault, I failed to explain in my message that the
confusion isn't with the notion of Hangouts as a new product, it's very
specifically in context of replacing existing services I know and use, and how
I cannot cognitively see the old service in the new, to the degree that I'm
now very confused about the whole offering (and am not the only one).

~~~
seiji
It's not so much anti-google as anti-people-in-ivory-towers-who-think-they-
can-unilaterally-do-whatever-they-want. As much as we enjoy reveling in our
creepy autistic spectrum ignorance of the world, we do have to integrate with
the rest of it.

------
rwmj
We use Hangouts extensively for meetings. They've almost replaced conference
calls.

Good stuff:

\- Works well, even with relatively poor network conditions and people located
in many continents.

\- Sound is excellent, good automatic echo cancellation and reasonable noise
reduction.

\- Doesn't crash (you'd think this would not be notable, but try Skype some
time ...)

Bad stuff:

\- User interface sucks. I get confused every single time I try to start a new
hangout. There seem to be multiple ways to start a hangout, none of them
obvious.

\- Can't record a hangout and keep the recording private.

\- Privacy of the whole thing is suspect (it is Google after all). The G+
plugin is incredibly invasive, to the point where I have a _separate computer_
entirely for G+ / hangouts and I use it for nothing else.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
> \- Can't record a hangout and keep the recording private.

Yep, so you end up making it public, then going back and downloading it, then
deleting it from YouTube.

Google seems to have a fixation that everything in the universe must exist on
the web -- and be accessed by typing into the Google search box. Whatever we
do in life, we get back to it from that little search box.

~~~
aerique
While they could just get valuable information from private communication
without making it public.

------
bonaldi
I think when this hits GMail in earnest there's going to be another huge
outcry.

Judging by my contact list and the lists of others I see, statuses and
presence are a really big deal: people use red-dot to mean "I'm here but
interrupt me only if it's crucial" and green-dot to say "fire at will!".

Hangouts supports none of this, only a very simplistic "I'm actively on a
device". There's no way to append "... and I'm working, so please don't
interrupt unless you have to". You can mute notifications, for a preset amount
of time, but that's not the same either -- it's turning off your phone rather
than setting it to silent.

I guess they see this as "advanced" functionality, but judging by the people I
know it isn't. They may have just copied Facebook, but Facebook messenger
isn't something people leave on all day, and it also allows you to selectively
block groups of chatty people until you're ready for them.

~~~
emu
If you ask me, the Hangouts actually is a huge improvement over the old Google
Talk.

I never sign into the old Talk on my gmail account because I find it very very
distracting. The presumption of Talk (or other IM clients) is that if I am
online, then I am willing to be interrupted to answer your message
immediately. That's absolutely not the case --- if I'm working, I'll answer
your message later.

The Hangouts (SMS-like) model is much more useful to me --- you can always
feel free send me a message, but I will answer it when I see fit. Hangouts
gives a hint as to whether I'm likely to read your message soon, but there's
no promise of a synchronous response.

~~~
bonaldi
That's what away statuses are for! "I'm signed in, but I'm not willing to be
interrupted". Hangouts takes away the very thing you say you need.

The SMS model is much less useful to IM users. If I was willing to wait for a
reply at the other person's convenience, I wouldn't be IMing them, I'd email
or SMS them.

IM is the online equivalent of a voice call: live and direct. That's going
away with hangouts, and that's bad. I don't want to start having to make phone
calls again /shudder.

~~~
cookiecaper
The difference is that in traditional IM, the expectation is that if you're
online, you'll be around shortly to return the _instant message_. Since
Hangouts disposes of "online" or "away" or whatever, there is less management
overhead needed to indicate status, and an immediate response is not
necessarily implied because you can't tell if a person is "standing by" their
computer or not, as is implied with a green-light IM status.

I never modulate my IM status manually because I don't like broadcasting that
information and I don't like the overhead. I want the ability to ignore people
and answer when I'm ready. All my IM clients are set to "always online"
(without even automatic modulation) because I want people to expect that even
if I am online, I may not be able to answer right away, and that they should
expect asynchronous replies when attempting any communication with me that is
not naturally synchronous (a natural, real-life conversation or a close
emulation thereof (video/voice call)).

~~~
bonaldi
I think we agree. My complaint is that they're replacing an instant messaging
service (which most people treat as synchronous) with an asynchronous service
and pretending there's not a fundamental difference here.

Sure, some people treat it is as async, but the way it's been used in my
experience is as mostly sync. Treating it as async gets perceived as rude,
unless you're very explicit about it (or if people see you're always
"available", then they get the message).

(Also note that Hangouts might make things worse for you too, as you'll only
be green-dot when you're actually at your computer, so people will know when
you're _actually_ there and ignoring them)

------
hkmurakami
"Line Chat" (a smartphone IM app in Japan) became the #1 "social network"
extremely quickly in Japan and its reach is slowly spreading to other
countries as well. (It blew by Facebook and its mainstream acceptance is must
be well beyond Twitter by now)

<http://line.naver.jp/en/>

Google+ might be onto something by focusing on "IM/chat" and other means of
communication, particularly outside of the united states.

~~~
yock
It seems obvious to me. SMS still lies outside of their control, and replacing
it with something that goes through their servers would give them access to
massive amounts of data otherwise unavailable to them.

~~~
Pxtl
Yes, but leaving out the SMS feature in the app still leaves their IM system
fragmented. SMS is essential in places where data plans are prohibitively
expensive.

~~~
fdr_cs
Or unreliable. I live at Brazil, and 3G connection here is awful, everywhere !

------
mynewwork
I "upgraded" the talk app on my phone to hangout. It was a terrible decision,
it's destroyed the primary use of my phone (using gchat while at work, on the
go, etc).

It mixed my gchat and phone contacts, so now the list of contacts is a giant
unusable mess. I can't see who of my friends are online. They moved the send
button from being at the bottom-right of the virtual keyboard to above the
keyboard next to the input text area which is awkward. I don't use google+ and
yet multiple friends were "blocked in google+" and I had to unblock them.

GChat / google talk have been the primary way I've kept in touch with friends
and family for years. The android talk app was perfect - intuitive, fast,
simple. It provided exactly what I needed - who is online, away, busy, offline
and a fast simple way to chat with them.

If this is the future for gchat, I'm going to have to try to convince friends
and family to switch back to AIM or MSN Messenger.

~~~
gwillen
Convince them to switch to XMPP instead. Get an account from Jabber.org, and
install Pidgin or Adium. Then they can talk to anybody else with an XMPP
account on any domain, which includes Google Talk users until that service
gets nuked.

------
philf
Unfortunately I installed Hangout on my phone this morning and basically
destroyed most of the utility GTalk had. None of my Google Talk contacts can
send messages to my mobile, I can't see them in my contact list (not even
people with Google accounts that don't use G+) and for the remaining ones with
G+ accounts there's no presence information I can recognize.

~~~
mtgx
Yes, that pissed me off, too. The messenger is now basically the old G+
Messenger, and _not_ Gtalk.

Also if they were going to do this, they should've done it across all Gtalk
platforms _at once_ , so nobody feels the "fragmentation" between the
services. I heard it will begin being rolled out to Gmail soon, but still. It
all should've happened in day one.

~~~
Hurdy
It's being rolled out to Gmail since day 1. You can't launch something like
this to several 100 millions of users in an hour.

------
ippisl
One thing that can really improve hangouts is eye contact.This is probably the
main difference between video conferecing and the more expensive telepresence
, which is replacing flights for business meetings.

While the eye-contact effect is harder to achieve on a pc[2], you can easily
achieve similar effect by using a TV , putting the camera on top of the TV,
and sitting in the right distance:

from "More than face-to-face: empathy effects of video framing"[1]":

""" TV Set-top design Viewing distances for large screen TVs make it easier to
design effective interactions. At an 8’-12’ viewing distance, the recommended
eye-camera distance is 8”-12”. An off-the-shelf camera placed flush on top of
the TV will still leave several inches of screen space to accommodate the eye-
head distance. A full screen upper-body image should give close to the
recommended eye-camera distance for 5◦ error, and certainly within the 90%
allowable angle error of 8◦. The camera lens can easily be chosen to frame the
correspondent’s upper body (or the whole body which may be more appropriate)
at 8’-12’ viewing distance. """

[1][http://gsct3237.kaist.ac.kr/e-lib/Conferences/CHI/2009/docs/...](http://gsct3237.kaist.ac.kr/e-lib/Conferences/CHI/2009/docs/p423.pdf)
[2]<https://plus.google.com/+GuyKawasaki/posts/KYADNHRgazS>

~~~
kalleboo
It would be cool if someone could engineer a phone with the front camera
behind the LCD screen somehow.

~~~
roc
<http://www.google.com/patents/US7535468>

Given how long ago that was, I'm guessing it still doesn't quite work, it
doesn't fit into a feasible footprint, or it interferes with some other more-
valued part of the current backlight/display/glass arrangement.

------
Matt_Cutts
The headline and url for this article is actually "Hangouts Feature Emerges as
a Big Bright Spot for Google+"--not sure why the HN title is "Hangouts are
swallowing all other Google communication clients"?

If you're going to rewrite the title, it could just as easily have been
"Google attempts to unify its messaging products."

~~~
jayjay1010
HI Matt, I'm in San Jose for the next few days and would love to meet you at
an event or something? talk about spam and the up coming updates, especially
since were from the other side of the world (London), are you at any events
that we could meet at, were here attending the bitcoin2013 and ieee, if your
interested.

------
zwieback
The article starts by stating Google+ has not really gone anywhere. I don't
use any social networks so I wouldn't know but I notice my daughters (10/12)
talking about Google+ a lot (although I don't allow them to use it yet).

I'm wondering if G+ is taking off with the younger crowd since there's a
logical pathway from Gmail which seems to be the mail everyone at that age
uses. The same seems to be true for Google chat, which my daughters use a lot.

------
kmfrk
Original/Current article title: "Hangouts Feature Emerges as a Big Bright Spot
for Google+"

It'll be interesting how important MOOCs will be to the direction and success
of Google's efforts to create a social platform.

The last time I tried out G+ was a few weeks ago, and I can't emphasize just
how heinous the UI was - so heinous that I got the impression that it must
have been deliberately so.

------
zeruch
For small teams I prefer hangouts to anything else (GoToHellMeeting, WebHex,
et al). They do need to make the archiving and extraction of data from
hangouts into something easily consumed by mortals. Beyond its most root
function (videoconferencing) its not a terribly well designed UX.

------
tyang
Startup investor here. I do lots of video calls, practically all on Hangout.
No founder has ever had an issue figuring it out. YMMV.

------
franze
i once installed the hangouts plugin on my 2009 mac book pro, killed the
webcam, complained in a help thread, no response, in the end had to reinstall
the OS.... as soon as it goes all-in HTML5/getUserMedia i will try it again.

