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Comment by ClassyJacket | Hacker News Reader

If I was in charge of communication at an enterprise I would stay the hell away from this. Google has probably abandoned this project already. I'm being semi serious - based on their history it might never get an update, or be dropped in a matter of months.

I'm not sure how Google expects anyone to invest in any of their minor platforms when they're so unfocussed and so notorious for abandoning and shutting down their services. Haven't they launched something like an average one new chat app every two months over the last six?

Enterprise apps are the very type that need long term confidence the most. Why are we to expect this would be any different to the multitudes of platforms they've abandoned and fragmented already?

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We have Google Hangouts equipment in all our meeting rooms at Square, and use them for many (most?) meetings. They generally work great.

What do you mean by hangouts equipment? (genuine question, I didn't know they had hardware)

Update: Never mind, I googled it :) very cool. So it's reliable? I'd love to suggest something like this for my organization. We waste the first 10 minutes of every. single. meeting. just getting situated. It's very frustrating.

Well, it's video conferencing, so of course sometimes it completely fails to work for no discernible reason. But generally, yes, it's pretty reliable. :-)

I've had good experiences with the $1k Hangouts boxes [1][2]. At first they felt unnecessary vs just dedicating one person's laptop to a hangout in each meeting, but the 5-10 minutes here and there that they save, the professionalism they bring to team meetings, and the improved audio quality from the dedicated mic makes them worthwhile.

I think $1k is a bit steep for what they are hardware-wise, but they're still worth it.

[1]: https://chromebusinessdevices.withgoogle.com/products/2911/a...

[2]: https://chromebusinessdevices.withgoogle.com/products/1706/a...

If you decide to suggest this, be sure to buy Chromebox _for meetings_. The regular Chromebox cannot be upgraded or converted into a Chromebox for Meetings. This caught me out the first time.

https://chromebusinessdevices.withgoogle.com/products/catego...

I don't think any of it's made by Google. I think we have these or something similar: https://enterprise.google.com/chrome/devices/#meetings

Yup, same at Twitch.

Same at Udacity.

And yet there is another thread on HN today saying that hangouts is going to stop working shortly on Firefox, as, inexplicably, it uses a plugin rather than WebRTC on FF.

Also, given that they're in the process of shutting down the hangouts API, it doesn't really inspire confidence.

WebRTC, on the other hand, seems to have a bright future.

Google use Hangouts for all their video conferencing, both purely internal AFAICT and with externals. I expect that's a large part of why they're continuing to support Hangouts for enterprise: they're heavily bought into it themselves.

I'm honestly surprised by it. I had gotten the uninformed impression that it was being abandoned. I think the introduction of Duo or whatever it's called (the new chat platforms) threw me off.

I'm a Google employee, opinions are my own.

Duo is person-to-person for mobile without the requirement of having a Google account. There are no multi-user video chats. There is no desktop client. It's more akin to Facetime from my point of view.

Hangouts video continues to serve a different market (people that need 3+ people in a chat, plus desktop support). Meet simplifies this for businesses that heavily use it, as you can just jump into Meet and join your next meeting (instead of finding it on your calendar and then joining it). From my own using of it, I've like it so far.

Keep in mind that March 8 is the start of Google Cloud Next[0]. This event covers cloud services, gsuite, and other enterprise focused features from Google. I'd keep an eye on that event.

[0] https://cloudnext.withgoogle.com/

You're probably surprised only because you didn't know that at some point Google was one of the largest Tandberg customers on the planet, if not the largest. Then it all makes sense.

This is just the next iteration of hangouts, which was already pivoting to enterprise, re-branded. Kinda necessary, since hangouts doesn't really suggest business use.

> they're so unfocussed and so notorious for abandoning and shutting down their services

When was the last time they shut down anything major other than a consumer service? Cloud is still going. AppEngine is still going. Apps/GSuite is still going. Google admittedly has a pretty terrible record on consumer products but in enterprise it seems pretty solid. The only shutdown I recall seeing that would affect a business is the site search, which doesn't appear to have been used much.

Enterprises pay money for support and these kind of guarantees.

They shut down the enterprise search box. It doesn't matter if its paid or free google isn't going to guarantee much.

Especially their messaging services, they officially promote at least 3 at this point? Just pick one and work on that you jerks.

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