3 ms·

I interviewed at Google a while back for an SRE position working with the Hangouts team. My first interview was in another office and the audio in Hangouts sess

I interviewed at Google a while back for an SRE position working with the Hangouts team. My first interview was in another office and the audio in Hangouts session would not start. We ending up having to move on to the next interview. I'm not surprised even Google employees don't use it.

nostrademons 7y ago
There was a running joke (out of frustration, really) back when I was at Google (2013) that Hangouts was happily adding hundreds of new emoji, yet did not consider "reliable message delivery" to be a key feature. Some of this is consumer vs. enterprise tension, though. Emoji demo really well on an initial product tour; reliability is one of those key features that's really hard to get people excited about, but which people hate to find lacking.
cameronbrown 7y ago
> I'm not surprised even Google employees don't use it. I wouldn't go that far - there's something like 250k hangout meetings per day at Google[0] and that was before Covid. [0] https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/how-google-went-all-video-meetings-and-you-can-too/ https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/how-google-went-all... (2017)
- sah2ed 7y ago
  Relevant text from your link: "Nearly a decade has passed since we built the first prototype. Face-to-face collaboration is ingrained in Google’s DNA now—more than 16,500 meetings rooms are VC-equipped at Google and our employees join Hangouts 240,000 times per day!"
TulliusCicero 7y ago
Hangouts Meet actually works very well overall. I work at Google and almost never have problems with it. Hangouts Chat, on the other hand...well okay, it seems reliable enough, doesn't have that problem that old Hangouts did. Comparing the UX to Discord just makes me sad though.
- snazz 7y ago
  This has been my experience as well (with some relatively large Hangouts Meet meetings in a big G Suite org). Compared with old-fashioned Hangouts, Meet is pretty reliable.

nostrademons 7y ago

There was a running joke (out of frustration, really) back when I was at Google (2013) that Hangouts was happily adding hundreds of new emoji, yet did not consider "reliable message delivery" to be a key feature. Some of this is consumer vs. enterprise tension, though. Emoji demo really well on an initial product tour; reliability is one of those key features that's really hard to get people excited about, but which people hate to find lacking.

cameronbrown 7y ago

> I'm not surprised even Google employees don't use it. I wouldn't go that far - there's something like 250k hangout meetings per day at Google[0] and that was before Covid. [0] https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/how-google-went-all-video-meetings-and-you-can-too/ https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/how-google-went-all... (2017)

sah2ed 7y ago
Relevant text from your link: "Nearly a decade has passed since we built the first prototype. Face-to-face collaboration is ingrained in Google’s DNA now—more than 16,500 meetings rooms are VC-equipped at Google and our employees join Hangouts 240,000 times per day!"

TulliusCicero 7y ago

Hangouts Meet actually works very well overall. I work at Google and almost never have problems with it. Hangouts Chat, on the other hand...well okay, it seems reliable enough, doesn't have that problem that old Hangouts did. Comparing the UX to Discord just makes me sad though.

snazz 7y ago
This has been my experience as well (with some relatively large Hangouts Meet meetings in a big G Suite org). Compared with old-fashioned Hangouts, Meet is pretty reliable.