14 DAY TRIAL // In a surprising turn of events, Google announced two new services that derive from its Hangouts application: Meet and Chat. Both seem to be aimed at business customers rather than the general public.
As the name suggests, Hangouts Meet is a video service that facilitates the meeting between team members. The new service supports up to 30-person video conferences and doesn't require any accounts, plugins, downloads or anything else.
Google also made it easier to adhere to these Meet conferences, as users will be able to join from Calendar, an email invite, or through a shared link. The service had been tested for about three months by Braintree, a PayPal service, so here is what they have to say about Hangouts Meet:
“Starting a meeting or sharing a document from the web, calendar invite or meeting room involves a single click. It’s an antidote to the VC fatigue that’s stopped my users and executives from taking full advantage of other systems,” says Jerome Knapp, Manager of Systems Administration at Braintree.
Hangout Chat service is still in beta testing
On the other hand, Hangouts Chat should provide teams with an intelligent communication tool that takes direct messaging in Hangouts and improves it for the modern world.
The new service comes with dedicated, virtual rooms where users will be able to chat in threaded conversations. It's also worth mentioning that Hangouts Chat is deeply integrated with G Suite, so users should be able to share content from Drive and Docs, as well photos and videos, which can be viewed directly in conversations.
According to Google, Hangouts Chat supports bots and integrates third-party apps. For example, the @meet intelligent bot that's built on top of the Hangouts platform is using natural language processing and machine learning to automatically schedule meetings for those using Meet and Google Calendar.
Keep in mind that while Hangouts Meet is generally available today, it will gradually roll out to all G Suite users over the next few weeks. G Suite customers can sign up to beta test Hangouts Chat via the Early Adopter Program.