Google Hangouts switched from the NPAPI plugin to WebRTC in Chrome back in 2014 [1], but still used plugins (NPAPI or ActiveX) for other browsers. Hangouts depends on non-standard WebRTC functionality in Chrome [2].
Google has had three years to adapt to other browsers' standard WebRTC stacks, but it was apparently not a priority for the company as long as the legacy Hangouts plugins still worked in other browsers. Mozilla announced in 2015 [3] that it would remove NPAPI plugin support in 2017, so Google had plenty of notice that the Hangouts plugin would stop working in Firefox. Google's new "Hangouts Meet" service is supposed to work with standard WebRTC in Firefox and Edge, but Hangouts Meet is still in beta and its system requirements page still only lists Chrome.
[1] https://plus.google.com/103171586947853434456/posts/39TCW3Pc...
[2] https://webrtchacks.com/hangout-analysis-philipp-hancke/
[3] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plu...