Now you don't have to open Gmail or Google+ to use Google Hangouts: just go to hangouts.google.com in your favorite desktop browser and check the new standalone web app for Google Hangouts. The site redirects to talkgadget.google.com, so you can use this URL too.


"We are launching another way to use Hangouts today. From our new site you'll be able to take advantage of the best of Hangouts in the browser, along with an inspiring image to get you through the day," says Google's Jordanna Chord.

It's actually a slightly different interface for the Hangouts feature from Gmail, except that Gmail has been replaced with a wallpaper you can't change, the Hangouts roaster is bigger and there's a navigation menu.

Jeremy Couch, a reader of this blog, noticed that video Hangouts have a new logo. Instead of the Google+ logo, Hangouts uses the Google logo.


The old logo:


Right now, Hangouts is a Google+ feature and it's also available inside Gmail, Google Inbox and as standalone apps for Chrome, Android and iOS. Maybe Google plans to detach Hangouts from Google+.

{ Thanks, Jeremy. }

Gmail added a tab that lets you make calls. If you've switched to Hangouts in the desktop Gmail interface, you should see a new phone icon at the bottom of the window. It shows a list of contacts that have phone numbers and it lets you search for names or phone numbers. Click a phone number to open an audio-only Hangouts window and dial the phone number you selected.


You can click "make a call" or use the search button to see the list of contacts. Google also suggests to "try our mobile apps for Android and iOS".


"Almost all calls to the U.S. and Canada are free from all countries where Hangouts calling is available. For the rest of 2014, the first minute of most calls to 25 countries are free, and you'll be charged for each minute after," informs Google. The list includes: China, France, Germany, Brazil, Russia, South Korea, Japan, India, United Kingdom.

If you use Google Hangouts inside Gmail, you may have noticed a new icon at the bottom of the page. It lets you switch to the new contacts tab that shows your chat buddies starting with the ones who are online, just like in the old Gmail Chat/Google Talk. The small green circle next to the profile picture shows that your chat buddy is online. "Available contacts (those with the green circle) will show in an alpha-ordered list first, followed by a second alpha-ordered list of unavailable contacts," explains Google.


You can also mouse over a contact, click the small arrow icon and pick one of the options: pin to top, start video call, send email or hide. Pin to top moves the contact in a new section at the top of the list.


There's also the regular Hangouts tab that shows your conversations sorted by date. Gmail remembers the most recently clicked tab.

"Starting today it's easier to see which of your chat buddies are currently online, thanks to a new tab in Hangouts in Gmail. In this new tab, friends who are online are shown first, followed by those who aren't. Of course, you can still send your offline friends a message and they'll get it the next time they check Hangouts on their computer, phone or table," informs Google.

For now, Google still lets you switch between the old Gmail Chat and Google Hangouts, so you can always click "Try the new Hangouts" to switch to Google Hangouts and then "Revert to old chat" to go back to Gmail Chat if you don't like Hangouts.

There's a Help Center article about a Google experiment that shows relevant Hangouts on Air in Google Search. "We're rolling out an experiment where you can easily find YouTube live events or Hangouts on Air to watch by searching for the event on Google.com. For example, if an author is answering questions about their latest book in a Hangout on Air, you can search the author’s name to find and watch the event," informs Google.


Apparently, a live event will start to show up in search up to 3 hours before it starts. You can find a list of Hangouts on Air and YouTube live events.

"If the event is happening now, you can touch the play on the video to watch the event live. If the event is happening later in the day, click Yes under 'Are you going to watch?' to add the event to your Google Calendar."

Google already announced that Google Voice's functionality will be added to Hangouts. Here's the interface that will be used for migration when this feature will be publicly released: "Migrate Google Voice to Hangouts. Receive voicemail and send text messages in Hangouts".


This dialog can actually be displayed in Hangouts, but the underlying functionality can't be enabled for now. There's an Android app called #DebugAllTheThings that enables debugging features from various Google apps like Play Store, Play Music, Play Books and Hangouts. It requires root, most debugging features aren't useful for regular users and some of them can even cause issues.

To display this message, install #DebugAllTheThings, enable "Hangouts" in the new app, restart the phone, open Hangouts, tap the menu, select "Debug" (this menu item is added by the #DebugAllTheThings app) and then "activate all butter bars".


Here are some other debug options:

- Hangouts: debug activity, request warm sync, rewind 10 days, refresh from contacts, dump database, toggle noise, run DB cleaner, test RTCS watchdog


- Play Books: log to GA (Google Accounts?), geo layer, performance logging, force annotation refresh, show recommendations, Play logging, WebView hardware rendering, mock recommendations, mock offers, emulate offers, compiled JS, search uploaded PDFs, enable in-app reviews


- Play Store: carrier override (not functional), skip caches, export library and asset store databases, disable personalization (this crashed the app for me), dump library state, fake item rater.


{ Thanks, Jérôme. }

Back in April, Google removed the SMS feature from Gmail Labs. Now SMS for Google Hangouts is discontinued.

Here's how Google described the feature: "If you enable SMS for Hangouts, you'll receive messages even when you're not connected to the internet. Messages will be delivered to you as SMS and you can reply by SMS to continue the conversation." SMS for Hangouts was released in May 2013.


Google informs that "this service will be discontinued. It will continue to be available until July 2nd, 2014."

Apparently, this is the settings page for SMS for Hangouts, but it doesn't work for me. All I get is this message: "We're sorry, the feature you are looking for is currently only available in a limited number of countries."

It's important to keep in mind that this has nothing to do with the SMS feature from the Hangouts app for Android. You can still send and receive text and multimedia messages in the Hangouts app. SMS for Hangouts only allowed you to receive Hangouts messages as SMS and to reply by SMS.

{ Thanks, Herin. }

Last year, Chrome's team announced that NPAPI support will be removed by the end of 2014. At that time, the Google+ Hangouts (Talk) plugin was one of the most popular NPAPI plugins used in Chrome (8.7% usage), so it was obvious that Google had to provide an alternative solution.

Now Google+ Hangouts no longer requires plugins in Chrome. Google uses WebRTC and Native Client to provide a native video chat experience.

"We're rolling out an update that makes it easier than ever to start Hangouts video calls with your family and friends! You'll now be able to launch Hangouts in Chrome without having to download and install a plugin. Just click to start the Hangout, allow Hangouts to use your camera and microphone, and you'll be good to go! This update is now available for all Chrome Dev and Canary users, and will be rolling out to all Chrome users over the next few weeks."


You can get a list of the plugins currently used by Chrome by visiting chrome://plugins (an internal Chrome page). The page lets you disable some of the plugins or whitelist them: check "always allowed" to disable Chrome's plugin blocking feature. Some of the plugins are bundled with Chrome and use Google's PPAPI/Pepper instead of NPAPI: Chrome Remote Desktop Viewer, Widevine Content Decryption Module, Adobe Flash Player, Chrome PDF Viewer, Native Client.

Some of the phone numbers from Google's Knowledge Graph cards are now linked and open Google Hangouts. When you search for a local business, Google usually displays the phone number next to the address. Click the phone number and you can call directly from your browser using Google Hangouts, which opens in a pop-up window and informs you about the fees. Calls made to the U.S. and Canada are free.


For searches like [john radcliffe hospital phone number], Google shows a separate card that includes the phone number.



It's interesting to notice that not all phone numbers are clickable. Phone numbers from local search results or from ads don't have links. Another exception: customer service numbers.


{ via Search Engine Roundtable }

Do you remember the post about the updated Gmail chat logs? The new interface is only displayed for Google Hangouts conversations, while the old interface is still used for Google Talk/Chat conversations.

The updated interface no longer treats chat logs like regular Gmail messages, so many features like reply, forward, label, "move to inbox" are gone. You can no longer disable chat history from Gmail's settings, but you can click "delete Hangout history" to "permanently delete all messages" in a Hangout.

Google Hangouts logs are loaded dynamically, as you can see in this screenshot. This suggests that the logs aren't really stored like standard Gmail messages.


I clicked the "print" icon next to one of my Hangouts and I was surprised to notice that the print preview page only included a few messages, not the entire conversation.

In fact, Google Hangouts logs are only displayed in the regular desktop Gmail interface. They're nowhere to be found in the "basic HTML" interface or in the mobile Gmail sites/apps, not even when you use the search feature.

Here are the search results for label:chat in the desktop interface. There are two kinds of results: conversations from Gmail Chat and Hangouts and they have different icons.


The basic HTML results only include Gmail Chat conversations:


Here's the mobile Gmail:


I disabled the conversation view in Gmail's settings to see how this affects Hangouts logs. Each reply was displayed in its own separate message, so a Hangout generated tens of message. Google Hangouts logs are unusable if you disable conservation view.



A very basic feature that worked well ever since Google Talk was launched is now broken: buggy, more limited and less useful.

{ Thanks, Katty. }

There's an interesting Google Settings page for phone numbers. By default, the page only includes a message that says: "No phone numbers associated with this setting."

A help center page explains that this feature will help your friends find your phone number.

"Help people who have your phone number find you on Google services and connect with you. For example, your friends will be able to start a Hangout with you by typing in your phone number. When this setting is checked, it makes it easier for people who have your phone number to find you on Google services. When this setting is unchecked, people may not be able to look up your name, photo and public Google profile (and other profile information you have shared with them) via that phone number."

It's related to the new Google+ Hangouts service, which asks users to verify their phone numbers so that the people who have their numbers could find them. Google tries to compete with services like iMessage and WhatsApp that replace text messaging.


If you confirm one or more phone numbers, the settings page will include them and you can uncheck some of them.


{ Thanks, Herin. }

I'm trying to understand Google+ Hangouts. It's supposed to replace products and features like Google Talk, Google Chat, Google+ Messenger and to become Google's unified messaging service.

Let's start with the name. It includes "Google+", so it looks like a Google+ feature. The product actually borrows the name of Google+'s group video chat feature.

How can you use this product? There are 5 ways: inside Google+ (replaces the Google Chat box), inside Gmail (optionally replaces the Gmail Chat box), using a Chrome extension (has already replaced the Google Chat extension and it requires Google+), an Android app (gradually replacing the built-in Google Talk app) and an iOS app (entirely new, requires Google+).

As you can see, 3 of the 5 ways to use it require Google+. You can refuse to upgrade to Hangouts in Gmail, but the Gmail Chat feature will eventually be discontinued. Probably most Android users will upgrade from Google Talk to Google+ Hangouts. The only other Google Chat clients are the Google Talk app for Windows and the chat boxes from iGoogle and orkut.

Google+ Hangouts doesn't require Google+, but most Google+ Hangouts clients require Google+. Actually there are 2 features that are somehow tied to Google+: sharing photos (they're uploaded to Google+ photos) and group chat. Here's what happens when you try to use them in Gmail, without joining Google+:



Google+ Hangouts has little in common with Google Chat/Talk, it's actually an upgraded Google+ Messenger. Hangouts focuses on conversations, not people, that's why you won't see a long list of buddies. Ideally, Hangouts lets you communicate with anyone you've added to a Google+ circle or anyone else, if you know his email address or phone number. When you open mobile clients for the first time, Google asks you to verify your phone number and that's optional.


Many people complain that Hangouts doesn't show if someone is online. Google's new service does away with busy/away/invisible/offline and has a different way to show if some is "connected": a green bar under the photo if someone can reply immediately. It only shows up if someone actually uses the application.


Hangout's tagline is "conversations come to life". Maybe because there are hundreds of emojis you can add to your messages, maybe because there's video chat, maybe because of the presence signals. "Hangouts inserts tiny little square avatars into the chat history, called 'watermarks.' These watermarks show when somebody else is typing, but they also indicate how far others have read in the conversation," reports The Verge.


Google+ Hangouts lacks many features from Google Chat: voice chat, phone calls, sending SMS, formatting tricks. You can now use keyboard shortcuts, but only for the desktop clients. Hangouts has its own Easter Eggs and they're really funny. Unfortunately, Hangouts drops support for server-to-server XMPP, it can't interact with other XMPP apps/services. It still works with Gmail Chat and Google Talk, though.

So what's Google+ Hangouts, after all? "The single communication app that we want our users to rely on," says Nikhyl Singhal, from Google. "We don't see Hangouts as a messaging product, we see it as a communication product," says product manager Kate Cushing.

Hangouts lets you decide for each Google+ circle if you want to be added to a hangout by its members or if you want them to send a request. Notifications are supposed to be synchronized for all your devices, so you only see them once, but I got multiple notifications.

Google+ is about real-life sharing, so Hangouts is built on top of the original Hangouts and Messenger features. The initial name of Google+ Messenger was Huddle, which means "draw together for an informal, private conversation".

The Talk era was about openness, the Chat era was about ubiquity, the Hangouts era is about Google+, the new Google that's all about social and mobile. From OpenSocial to ClosedSocial, from OpenMessaging to ClosedMessaging, from idealism to realism.

Google Accounts settings page has a new feature called "SMS for Hangouts". You can "add your phone number to receive messages from Google+ Hangouts as SMS, when you are idle." Google goes on to explain that "SMS is less secure and may be less reliable than web-based communication. All messages sent by SMS are sent via your mobile carrier network, without encryption."


This features works for most of the countries where Gmail SMS is supported, but not the US. It works for India, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Ukraine, Congo and many other countries from Africa and Asia.


{ Thanks, Herin and Camilo. }