More than half of the workforce will contribute remotely by 2020, so businesses require purpose-built tools to help employees succeed. At its Google Cloud Next Conference, the company has finally shed some light on what Duo, Allo, Meeet, Chat and Hangouts are all about.
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Hey, I’ve got Hangouts news for you!
Earlier in the week, Google opened its beta-page revealing that it is building a dedicated video conferencing app with Hangouts UI for mobile and desktops.
Hangouts Chat will still offer direct one-on-one chats, and it will also still work natively on the web, Android, and iOS. This could prove useful in cases where a person can’t go online.
Google is making massive changes to Hangouts.
Meet, which was accidentally revealed to the public last week, is an expansion of the existing videoconferencing capabilities for Hangouts. Companies can add a maximum of 30 participants in each video call meeting. Now since Hangouts’ services are transitioning over to being an enterprise software, it makes sense that Google is partnering with Box, which is mostly used by enterprise customers for storing files. The idea behind it is that teams working on a project should be able to discuss tasks, share work, and more. It’s also got a “green room”, where you can check yourself, make sure you look presentable and then join the video call meeting. There will be no accounts, plugins, downloads, or hassles required. It is not exactly the same as the regular old Hangouts video chat we’ve all been using for a while.
Google is also launching with some extensibility options: users will be able to create “app scripts” to have bots do work inside the chat, and it will allow third-party companies to create apps that integrate with Hangouts Chat. Meet further integrates directly into G Suite so information about a conference is automatically present in Calendar.
There are a couple of important things to note about Hangouts Chat, though. Google says the new Hangouts Chat is ready for enterprises, comes with data loss prevention, and will allow for admin controls as well.
For those following along at home, Google’s certainly done this to its chat clients before. The introduction of Hangouts Chat is meant to solve that problem and now closes the loop by providing a full stack of resources for any company.
Hangouts Meet is available starting today and will roll out to all G Suite customers over the coming weeks.
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Of course, Google wouldn’t let others take on the workplace communication market when it already offers some of the most popular tools with its G Suite. Additionally, Hangouts Chat evolves the Hangouts experience in a way that can scale to enterprise-sized organizations. The app basically super chargers the current Hangouts platform, but now with rooms, threaded conversations and G Suite integration.
