Google rebooting Hangouts into business-focused apps for video chat and messaging

Hangouts Chat is a communication tool for teams who use G Suite (which is basically Google’s version of Microsoft’s Office 365). It’s part of Google’s ongoing attempt to give users as many messaging apps as possible. It can even automatically pull in files you need directly from Google Drive for when you need to screen share.

Something interesting, too, about this is support for Google App Script. Bots and third-party apps can be brought right into conversations on Hangouts Chat. We’re now getting a glimpse of what that means – and if the early demo I saw is any indication, it might be time to stop making fun of Hangouts.

If you know anything about Google’s messaging strategy in the last few years, you know that it’s been a bit of a mess.

At the moment, Hangouts Chat is a pretty minimal messaging app for teams.

Hangouts Meet is the video portion of the Hangouts service, and it’s been streamlined and cleaned up to make meeting with teams easier. The idea behind it is that teams working on a project should be able to discuss tasks, share work, and more. Chat also offers to break conversations into threads, much like Slack.

There’s also a new video component called “Hangouts Meet”. And if you need to find a certain document or message that one user sent, you can use Hangouts Chat’s search functionality. There will be no accounts, plugins, downloads, or hassles required.

Portability is also a key feature so that call participants can join on any device from any location. In the future, the company will have the new services supersede its older offering, but that’s further down the road. The Hangouts chat bot is also created to facilitate smoother virtual gatherings by automatically taking note and even suggesting meeting times, which will then be scheduled in Google Calendar. And naturally, the apps are tightly integrated with the rest of the G Suite apps. G Suite Enterprise customers also get a dedicated dial in number for participants to join the call if necessary. 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.

But the new Hangouts apps put ease-of-use at the forefront, Johnston said, and they “can strip away all of the mundane steps” people have to do before they initiate online video conferencing and host online chats. While Hangouts Chat is built for device-to-device communication, Hangouts Meeting is built for group meetings. Google says that it’s partnering with Asana, Box, Prosperworks, and Zendesk for this.

An @meet bot sits on top of the Hangouts platform and uses natural language processing and machine learning to schedule team meetings automatically. with Hangouts Meet and Google Calendar, naturally.

Well, Allo and Duo for regular customers and Meet and Chat for enterprise. Meet is available today to Google’s enterprise folks.

While Hangouts Meet will be available to all GSuite users, Google is also rolling out the “Early Adopter Program” for GSuite enterprise users who want to try out the new Hangouts Chat.