Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Hangouts is solid proof that no one at Google uses the multiple account support. If they did, it wouldn't be so awful.

I click a hangout link for a work call and get "no one in the call". I have to add authuser=1 to the URL manually to see that it's actually that I don't have permission to it.

View on HN

This happens to me on GSuite all the time, I actually stopped using it and just call in a separate conference line. I would show up, usually first to the meeting, and it would just sit and say no one is around. Then I could logout, log back in and I'd see everyone else was suddenly there. I missed 2-3 meetings at my newest job because of this. This is the paid version of Google too, absolutely not acceptable. My old job had Office 365 and I long for it, it's just not as competitively priced for SMBs.

This. Happens all the time and then people say, "You never showed up." The authuser=1 tip is great. Thanks for sharing that!

At the bottom, in tiny font, there is a "change account" link that gives you the ability to switch that call to a different Google account.

It's tiny, you might have missed it...

Sure, but it's silly that it's required, and the "no one here" is hugely misleading.

Google knows which accounts I'm logged in as. They know which accounts have access to the meeting. If I'm logged in as one of these accounts, why not do it automatically for me?

Hangouts is also solid proof that no-one at Google uses a non-Chrome browser on Android: trying to open a meeting hangout invite with anything other than Chrome as the default browser … opens a link to Google Play, not the Hangouts app.

I think this is because they use a different URL in meeting invites than the one registered for the Hangouts app.

It's been a bug for ages, and AFAICT they just don't care.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com