With the launch of Allo and Duo last year, Google’s chat app ecosystem grew increasingly disparate and confusing.
The tech giant also stated at the time that it had plans to eventually spin-off its popular, but seemingly forgotten Hangouts chat platform into an enterprise product.
Now, at the Next conference in San Francisco, Google has revealed plans to split Hangouts into two services: Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. The former is a Slack-like group chat app, that apparently still retains the simple chat functionality it already has, while the latter is focused on video conferencing.
Meet is designed to “make joining meetings effortless so that people can be as productive as they are when they’re face-to-face,” according to a blog post from Google director of product management for Hangouts, Scott Johnston.
Hangouts Chat sounds very similar to Slack and is focused on different projects and groups, as well as features like threaded conversations.
The platform is also deeply integrated with Google’s suite of apps, allowing users to easily share Drive files, photos and videos. Google claims that the new platform features a powerful search engine that allow sit to easily surface the content you’re looking for. One-on-one chats — a feature that long-time users of the platform likely know it best for — will still work on iOS, Android and desktop, according to Google.
In addition, Hangouts Chat is compatible with Google’s third-party Google App Script bot platform. The company showed off ‘@meet,’ a first-party Hangout app that uses natural language processing and machine learning to automatically schedule meetings in the new Hangouts and Google Calendar.
Meet, on the other hand, is an extension of Hangouts current video features, adding support for up to 30 people on both mobile apps and desktop, with only a shared link being necessary to join the conversation. Meet is slated for rollout to G Suite customers in the coming weeks.
Hangouts Chat is available now in some regions with a gradual rollout planned over the next few weeks. Those interested in trying out the app can apply via Google’s Early Adopter Program. Google says that Hangouts chat will be generally available to all Gmail users in a ‘freemium’ model of some sort, though it’s unclear what that will look like exactly given the service’s renewed focus on enterprise users.
Both Google’s new Hangouts Chat and Meet platforms are set to feature iOS, Android and desktop based apps, according to the company.
Microsoft is expected to reveal the final version of its Slack competitor, Teams, on March 14th.
Source: Google
Via: The Verge
