Google today announced two new communication services for businesses, called Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat, moving further toward transitioning Hangouts into an enterprise platform.
Last year, Google introduced Allo and Duo , its new messaging and video chat services. When asked what would happen to Hangouts, the company said that it would be better suited for businesses moving forward , although it wasn’t clear what the firm meant by that at the time. Today, Google announced two new Hangouts-branded services, giving us a clearer idea of its business-oriented strategy.
One of the new services is called Hangouts Meet, which is pictured above. Google says that Meet has one goal: “make joining meetings effortless so that people can be as productive as they are when they’re face-to-face. ”
You can start a meeting by simply sharing a link, and you won’t need any “accounts, plugins, downloads, or hassles. ” People can join the meeting from Calendar, an email invitation, or an “ad-hoc share”. For G Suite Enterprise customers, each meeting has a dial-in phone number, so you can join a meeting even if you don’t have a data connection.
