>audio echo That's a difference in the audio algorithms used. Skype uses SILK while I believe that Google Hangouts uses Opus. SILK and Opus are closely related

>audio echo That's a difference in the audio algorithms used. Skype uses SILK while I believe that Google Hangouts uses Opus. SILK and Opus are closely related however. I would assume that Skype didn't allow all their fancy echo-cancellation tweaks to be open-sourced so it's a little better in the Skype implementation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILK#Opus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILK#Opus