4 ms·

You're in luck! There is a little-known product made by Google called Hangouts[0]. It is cross platform: iOS, Android, Web, and has native apps for Windows and

• alttab 10y ago
  Plus for the most part if people are still on gChat it uses that. I have no idea why the cool parts of allo aren't just a feature of chats in Hangouts.
• chrishynes 10y ago
  I use and love Hangouts for this exact reason. I haven't found anything that can do the IM+Voice+SMS combo crossplatform. I don't get why Google isn't pressing Hangouts hard vs. letting it languish. It really should be a core product that ties everything together. Unified contacts, instant communications of all varieties, whether SMS, IM, voice, video... Since it hasn't got an update in forever, the UI is crappy, and they've turned off all API access and denied people writing third party clients. I now wish there was an alternative, but I haven't found anything that does it all. Why, Google, Why!?!?
• lewisl9029 10y ago
  > It stores your texts in the cloud forever It does? Are we talking about SMS here? Last time I checked Hangouts certainly did not sync SMS messages. A real shame because I miss that functionality sorely when switching between devices.
  • modeless 10y ago
    It does if you use Google Voice or Google Fi.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
• ack 10y ago
  And you can use it in your browser!
• ce4 10y ago
  Little known? You must be kidding. It has more than 1 Billion installations [0]. It's pre-installed on every Android Handset and is the designated successor to Google Talk, a once great XMPP chat service which had offered real xmpp federation until Google rebranded it to Hangouts. I really liked Google Talk back then, Hangouts gradually made it worse and worse. The hurdles to onboard new chat members are too big (you need a G Account, needed a Google Plus profile at some time). While the G Account is a given on Android phones, it's a big hurdle for adding iOS users. The process is buggy as well: After adding an account for a friend, we often had to wait 1-2 days to "find" the person on Hangouts and be able to add them to the group chat. On top of that, the app is slow slow slow (the browser chat as well). As a community moderator I had to deal with above issues constantly but we kept using Hangouts for years... despite its shortcomings. Ultimately though, we abandoned it and switched to Telegram. Much faster mobile Apps, super easy onboarding for new members and a great Browser client as well (plus the company is FOSS friendly, allows custom implementations). The Hangouts dev team even knows about its bad reputation and the product manager even acknowledged that at some time [0]: "P.S. Unlike what the /r/Android subreddit says, the Hangouts team does come to work every morning trying to make it better :)" [0]: https://plus.google.com/+MayurKamat/posts/T1FNqgAWzgE https://plus.google.com/+MayurKamat/posts/T1FNqgAWzgE
  • kinkrtyavimoodh 10y ago
    The parent comment was being sarcastic.
• pritambarhate 10y ago
  I just tried it out. Despite of using GMail for years, I didn't know Google had created hangouts.google.com. :-) Just tried it out and to my disappointment, it doesn't allow me to send a file other than images to other users. Google engineers if you are listening please add the ability to send docs and files to other users!
  • joncrocks 10y ago
    Presumably this is because they don't want hangouts to become a de facto file sharing service, by the fact that the person you're messaging could be offline and you might expect the content to be archived/re-downloadable. The fact that pictures are shareable is (I think) because they do/can put the pictures into a google photos gallery. What you probably want to do is put it in google drive and then share a link in hangouts. (Not a googler)
• hackaflocka 10y ago
  It lacks integration with SMS though. GText will integrate SMS and all in-house Google instant-messaging/texting modalities.