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Finally! I don't know anyone who likes G+ over Skype, but we all use it for the group video features.
by gum_ina_package 12y ago
Finally! I don't know anyone who likes G+ over Skype, but we all use it for the group video features.
- shawabawa3 12y agofunny, because I don't know anyone who likes skype over G+
- sremani 12y agoI prefer Skype over Google Video in that I can pick my call on my PC, laptop, phone or Xbox One. Imagine having a group call on Xbox One - TV, that would be a sweet conversation and I for one really appreciate this new feature.
- kyrra 12y agoGoogle Hangouts work on PCs, laptops, and phones. When I get a hangout call, it rings on all devices where I'm currently logged into hangouts. TV is the only place Xbox wins today. Though google does have some TV toys right now (Google TV and Chromecast). They could probably look into adding a webcam to that with hangouts.
- jonknee 12y agoThey have a TV solution for conference rooms, but it's "enterprisey" in that it's not cheap and comes with an annual fee. https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/solutions/for-meetings.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/solutions/for...
- nobotty 12y agohail corporate
- apu 12y agoThis kind of comment is not appreciated here.
- jaibot 12y agoSkype's Linux clients are always wonky. G+ has more ItJustWorks, and the contacts list is already built for me from years of using Google stuff.
- subdane 12y agoI prefer G+, but the onboarding - actually getting disparate folks easily invited and notified has been inscrutably hard. Part of the prob is that I have multiple gmail accts and address books as do the folks I'm inviting, but another prob seems to be the less than ideal invite workflow. When Goog gets calendars, gmail, docs and hangouts well integrated, Skype will have a serious threat on its hands.
- unoti 12y agoMy invite workflow is "Skype everybody the G+ URL"... If they could make a better workflow that'd be great. Maybe they could stop tripping over their feet trying to make everything social and just make this workflow make more sense!
- theandrewbailey 12y agoEveryone else in the podcasting network I'm on uses G+, but I like Skype because it's easier to record it with one computer.
- praeivis 12y agoFunny, because I dont know anyone who use G+ at all. Except these who was forced to make G+ profile while was registering just for e-mail. And same time I know hundreds who use skype on daily basic on literally every device they own. Including TV. Only device in my house lacking skype it's refrigerator.
- jaredmcateer 12y agoYou dont need to use G+ to use Hangouts. If you have a gmail account you're a one step install away from using video chat. Doesn't matter if you have multiple gmail accounts or not, you just need a link, which hangouts gives you in the invite modal.
- ballpoint 12y agoYeah everyone I know hates switching to G+ for group calls. We have to use Skype to guide people through the G+ interface and get them on a group call.
- eitally 12y agoWhy not just point them at http://g.co/hangouts http://g.co/hangouts ?
- frabcus 12y agoWhere did you find that link? Or indeed, the page it points to? I've never seen either before.
- joshstrange 12y agoI too would be interested in knowing where you found that. It has a beautiful interface and solves my #1 annoyance with google hangouts which is: "Where do I go to start one?". Every time I try to use Hangouts I invite a friend but they never get the invite or the other way around and we spend 5min getting it setup when we could have used Skype and had zero issues. Trust me I am all for getting off Skype but hangouts has neither been easy or fast to get going in my experience.
- BHSPitMonkey 12y agoYou have always been able to just visit https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/ https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/ to directly open a new empty hangout. This is equivalent to clicking "New Video Hangout" in the G+ sidebar. Also, you can give anyone a direct link to any hangout (e.g. via email or text).
- joshstrange 12y agoSorry I just got around to this comment. Thank you for the information!
- reledi 12y agoEvery technical person I know prefers Google Hangouts over Skype.
- gygygy 12y agoEvery "technical" person. I most times find myself using team-viewer to get G+ to work whenever I have a group chat with my school pals. G+ is great, but unfortunately I have found many non technical people I know have a hard time using it.
- finkin1 12y agoI'm the CEO of a small remote-working startup with 5 employees. I pay $20/mo for Skype since some of people I meet with only use that and I need the group screen sharing feature. Whenever I have a Skype meeting, I'm nervous, because 50% of the time video or screen sharing won't work. Once I get them to switch to Hangouts there's no problems, ever. Are you telling me that you experience the opposite? If so, that's very odd.
- jypepin 12y agoI feel you. I used to use skype for communication with my family, but grew tired of it not working properly. My parents never were able to use properly Hangout because it is too counter-intuitive for them (log on gmail - oops forgot my password, find the chat bottom left window, "Why do you make me go to my emails to chat with you, son?"). Too bad because the few times I was able to connect with them, it was such a better experience than Skype. I bought an iPad to my mom for Christmas and facetime with them now. It's the best I've found - even easier for them to use than Skype. They call me, I call them, there no confusion anymore. No idea about the group chat, but I will agree on Skype working really badly (despite their 10+ years of experience) compared to newer solutions as hangout and facetime.
- perbu 12y agoWe've been using hangouts more or less exclusively for at least a year. Hangouts are very stable. When doing training we have hangout sessions that last for two days (minus the nights of course). The problem with hangouts are with access control. Most people are not signed in with an ID that matches their email address and I still don't know how to schedule a hangout that is protected only by it's URL.
- lotharrr 12y agoI've been able to create URL-based "unlisted" hangouts with: http://plus.google.com/hangouts/_ http://plus.google.com/hangouts/_ That will redirect you to a new hangout URL, and (in my experience) you can just copy/paste the new URL to other folks. To use it, they'll need to be logged into a G+ account, but it doesn't matter which one.
- yen223 12y agoG+'s video quality was miles ahead of Skype's. Heck, even FaceTime's video quality was better.
- coherentpony 12y agoIn my experience, FaceTime's quality has surpassed the others as of recent. Partly due to the new retina screen and HD iPhone camera.
- yen223 12y agoI suspect it's some magical data compression technique, because my overseas video calls usually suffer from serious stuttering on Skype, but on Facetime it's smooth as silk. Either that, or better bandwidth because less people use Facetime.
- Someone 12y agoBetter bandwidth is not a function of number of users, but of what you want to spend per user. I don't have personal experience comparing the qualities of Skype vs FaceTime, but I guess Apple is willing to spend more per user. That makes sense: FaceTime sells hardware, and that brings in money, while Skype seems more like a land grab, especially with this 'group calls are free, too' change. It could also be defensive, with Microsoft thinking they have to offer this to prevent would-be Office 365 users from migrating to Google docs.
- coherentpony 12y agoMaybe, yeah. I have a feeling the networking is the bigger culprit. In any case, there are definitely fewer users on FaceTime than on Skype.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago>> "Heck, even FaceTime's video quality was better." I've noticed this too. For a while I was on a really poor internet connection and on Skype calls video just didn't work. However FaceTime was practically flawless on the same connection.
- _wmd 12y agoI prefer Skype since although it has always been a huge CPU hog, its UI is perfect for beginners (i.e. family) and in the decade I've used it, I've never once been cross-sold some pointless feature the parent company are currently trying to promote. Note Hangouts itself once was Gtalk, which I was a user of, prior to the first cattle herding on to Google+. Now Gundotra is out the door, there is no telling into which silo existing G+ users will be cattle-herded next. Hangouts might be technically superior (although I personally think Skype's rate-adaptive video is second to none), but the treatment of users by its parent company, and their endless thirst for personal data keeps me far away. Skype just works, just like it has for the past decade, and just like I expect it will continue to in the coming years. I'd place a small wager on Hangouts being long dead, or at the very least rebranded before then
- mcescalante 12y agoFor some reason, G+ hangouts eat a lot more CPU for me than Skype does.
- rikkus 12y agoLack of GPU acceleration of Flash?
- aroch 12y agoI'm more inclined to think lack of HW-decoding for VP8/9 + Google's "VideoandTalk" plugin on OSX is a piece of crap.
- coherentpony 12y agoIs it Flash? I thought it was just webkit's video rendering.
- tambourine_man 12y agoIt uses WebRTC and the video tag AFAIK
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- Trufa 12y agoSeriously? I live abroad and skyped with my family weekly until we switched to G+ to never go back, the quality of the calls and or video difference is not even funny.