Google is ready to take over your office chat with Hangouts
Say hello to Meet and Chat.
Google's work of transitioning Hangouts from being its default chat app to a more business focus is nearly complete. First up is the formally announced Hangouts Meet. Sound familiar? That's because it semi-officially arrived at the first of the month. Now Google is ready to take it wide. At its core, Meet is all about making video conferencing faster and easier. That comes down to not needing any special software or logins for video chat -- just a shared link. No WiFi? No problem because people can dial in with a dedicated phone number too. So long as their organization is a G Suite Enterprise customer, of course. Meet will support video calls with up to 30 people.
Next is Hangouts Chat, which is all about threaded conversations and pulling from G Suite services like Google Docs. There's even an internal bot (@meet) that can automatically schedule meetings that'll work with everyone's schedule via Google Calendar integration. Given the ubiquity of Google Cloud services among businesses and even the website you're reading right now, chances are that you could see this turning up in your workplace sometime soon.
