5 ms·

What's god-awful about Hangouts, and does the new Hangouts Meet make things better? https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/meet-the-new-enterprise-focused-ha

by crb 9y ago

What's god-awful about Hangouts, and does the new Hangouts Meet make things better? https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/meet-the-new-enterprise-focused-hangouts/ https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/meet-the-new-enterp...

scrollaway 9y ago
Haven't used Meet, wouldn't know how as it's the first time I have heard of it. As for what's awful about it, where to start? Slow, hard to join, doesn't play well with multiple Google accounts, bugs and crashes with screen sharing, ...
dingdingdang 9y ago
Why would anyone at this point go with Google's solutions for voice/video? Last time someone over at Arstechnica did a count they had 4 or 5 competing and largely incompatible solutions - they are NOT a serious player when it comes to producing, and perhaps more importantly - maintaining, a Skype replacement/alternative.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Almost as if Google internally use IM clients are proof of concept implementations...
owaislone 9y ago
Hangouts is a good piece of tech and the has a great UX with minimal UI. The only issues with hangouts are that: 1. It is a resource hog. Laptops spit fire when they run hangouts for more than 10 minutes 2. It can be buggy and unreliable. Almost every 3rd hangout meeting, someone on my team is unable to hear others or is unable to use the mic. Fix can range anything between restarting the computer to killing audio processes. In my experience, it is much less reliable on OS X than Linux. If they manage to make it reliable and reduce resource usage, it'll be the perfect video conference app. Also, it doesn't currently work on firefox which is a pain.
- matwood 9y ago
  Using Safari for Hangouts on OS X does help with the resource usage some.
- rch 9y ago
  Try sending an SMS via Hangouts (desktop), or searching past messages. The background pictures are nice and all, but that's not great UX.
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  Google Hangouts has serious UI problems. People can't find the chat even when it's pointed out to them. Chat should be more prominent. At the moment, it's easier to send people to a Slack channel to chat during a Hangout than to use Hangout's chat.
- _asummers 9y ago
  Not to mention that it supports XMPP for person to person, but group chats no longer work, forcing me to use the browser client despite myriad XMPP clients existing. I understand that it's not XMPP expressly, but that was a feature that used to work on GChat that was removed for seemingly no reason.
- briandear 9y ago
  Great UX? Are we using the same product? It’s not intuitive at all, you don’t know what an icon does until you click it. Text labels would be nice. Then they seem to alter it every few months so “where is the screen share” becomes a common question. Good UI should be instantly clear to even a new user – it shouldn’t require hovering or guessing.
- sjellis 9y ago
  Yeah, we use Hangouts for daily standups with all of our teams, so we do multi-way calls for several hours every day (mostly macOS actually, but some Windows), and it's consistently reliable for us. We migrated from Skype, which would always become flaky if there were more than four people on a call. It really is good, at least on Chrome, but I worry that Google will let it stagnate.
- 9y ago
peterwwillis 9y ago
Besides the fact that Hangouts doesn't work at all half the time (on the web or in-app), the other half of the time the quality and stability are so poor that video is just avoided completely. That there is a new product using the same damaged brand inspires zero confidence. It's ridiculous to have all these separate apps that don't seem to be cohesive at all. For instance, nobody I know who travels even knows that Hangouts Dialer exists, even though it's incredibly useful while abroad. Pretty much every product that Google makes is crap, or there is always a better alternative, or the product is virtually invisible, and most updates seem to be making each product harder to use or more unstable. They're not intuitive, features have no useful help reference in the app, and bugs are everywhere. The worst so far was the new web UI for Google Voice. It doesn't show the most current messages. I've filed a half dozen bug reports for months with no feedback or fixes.
hellbanner 9y ago
Can't default to video off in calls.
drdaeman 9y ago
Possibly, complete lack of any desktop software?
CalRobert 9y ago
We're a shrinking bunch (sadly) but if you care about being able to use Firefox, Hangouts feels like Google's attempt to kill it. They apparently can't figure out WebRTC in Firefox.
yoodenvranx 9y ago
> What's god-awful about Hangouts Basically everything. It used to be the main communication tool of the Ingress community (precursor of Pokemon Go) due to it's integration with the game but 95% of all players have moved to Telegram because HO is a horribly broken piece of tech which becomes worse and worse after each update. A running gag in the Ingress community was that the HO is to Google what Australia was to the U.K., e.g. if you did something stupid while working at Google you would be sent to work with the HO team as punishment.
robin_reala 9y ago
Embrace-and-extend on WebRTC meaning that, despite 2 years notice when Firefox removed NSAPI plugin support, they still need a further 6 months to restore standards compatibility. That’s pretty god-awful.

by crb 9y ago

scrollaway 9y ago

Haven't used Meet, wouldn't know how as it's the first time I have heard of it. As for what's awful about it, where to start? Slow, hard to join, doesn't play well with multiple Google accounts, bugs and crashes with screen sharing, ...

dingdingdang 9y ago

Why would anyone at this point go with Google's solutions for voice/video? Last time someone over at Arstechnica did a count they had 4 or 5 competing and largely incompatible solutions - they are NOT a serious player when it comes to producing, and perhaps more importantly - maintaining, a Skype replacement/alternative.

digi_owl 9y ago
Almost as if Google internally use IM clients are proof of concept implementations...

owaislone 9y ago

Hangouts is a good piece of tech and the has a great UX with minimal UI. The only issues with hangouts are that: 1. It is a resource hog. Laptops spit fire when they run hangouts for more than 10 minutes 2. It can be buggy and unreliable. Almost every 3rd hangout meeting, someone on my team is unable to hear others or is unable to use the mic. Fix can range anything between restarting the computer to killing audio processes. In my experience, it is much less reliable on OS X than Linux. If they manage to make it reliable and reduce resource usage, it'll be the perfect video conference app. Also, it doesn't currently work on firefox which is a pain.

matwood 9y ago
Using Safari for Hangouts on OS X does help with the resource usage some.
rch 9y ago
Try sending an SMS via Hangouts (desktop), or searching past messages. The background pictures are nice and all, but that's not great UX.
JoshMnem 9y ago
Google Hangouts has serious UI problems. People can't find the chat even when it's pointed out to them. Chat should be more prominent. At the moment, it's easier to send people to a Slack channel to chat during a Hangout than to use Hangout's chat.
_asummers 9y ago
Not to mention that it supports XMPP for person to person, but group chats no longer work, forcing me to use the browser client despite myriad XMPP clients existing. I understand that it's not XMPP expressly, but that was a feature that used to work on GChat that was removed for seemingly no reason.
briandear 9y ago
Great UX? Are we using the same product? It’s not intuitive at all, you don’t know what an icon does until you click it. Text labels would be nice. Then they seem to alter it every few months so “where is the screen share” becomes a common question. Good UI should be instantly clear to even a new user – it shouldn’t require hovering or guessing.
sjellis 9y ago
Yeah, we use Hangouts for daily standups with all of our teams, so we do multi-way calls for several hours every day (mostly macOS actually, but some Windows), and it's consistently reliable for us. We migrated from Skype, which would always become flaky if there were more than four people on a call. It really is good, at least on Chrome, but I worry that Google will let it stagnate.
9y ago

peterwwillis 9y ago

Besides the fact that Hangouts doesn't work at all half the time (on the web or in-app), the other half of the time the quality and stability are so poor that video is just avoided completely. That there is a new product using the same damaged brand inspires zero confidence. It's ridiculous to have all these separate apps that don't seem to be cohesive at all. For instance, nobody I know who travels even knows that Hangouts Dialer exists, even though it's incredibly useful while abroad. Pretty much every product that Google makes is crap, or there is always a better alternative, or the product is virtually invisible, and most updates seem to be making each product harder to use or more unstable. They're not intuitive, features have no useful help reference in the app, and bugs are everywhere. The worst so far was the new web UI for Google Voice. It doesn't show the most current messages. I've filed a half dozen bug reports for months with no feedback or fixes.

hellbanner 9y ago

Can't default to video off in calls.

drdaeman 9y ago

Possibly, complete lack of any desktop software?

CalRobert 9y ago

We're a shrinking bunch (sadly) but if you care about being able to use Firefox, Hangouts feels like Google's attempt to kill it. They apparently can't figure out WebRTC in Firefox.

yoodenvranx 9y ago

> What's god-awful about Hangouts Basically everything. It used to be the main communication tool of the Ingress community (precursor of Pokemon Go) due to it's integration with the game but 95% of all players have moved to Telegram because HO is a horribly broken piece of tech which becomes worse and worse after each update. A running gag in the Ingress community was that the HO is to Google what Australia was to the U.K., e.g. if you did something stupid while working at Google you would be sent to work with the HO team as punishment.

robin_reala 9y ago

Embrace-and-extend on WebRTC meaning that, despite 2 years notice when Firefox removed NSAPI plugin support, they still need a further 6 months to restore standards compatibility. That’s pretty god-awful.