What is Google Hangouts?

Google started out as a search engine over two decades ago. Since then, the company has con­tin­u­al­ly expanded its services and ap­pli­ca­tions. Nowadays, digital com­mu­ni­ca­tion would be almost unimag­in­able without Google and its many services. One such service is Hangouts, a messaging app launched in 2013. In this article, you’ll learn what Google Hangouts is and how you can use this com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool.

As the name suggests, Google Hangouts is a place for virtual meetings and con­ver­sa­tions. The tool offers three different features: video calls, phone calls and messaging:

With Google Hangouts, you can send more than just text messages. You can also share videos, photos, stickers or your current location with your contacts. Your chat history is saved on a Google server so that you can edit and search it from any device signed into your Google account. You can also see which messages your contacts have read.

1. Open Google Hangouts. To find the person you want to message, use the search bar or choose a person from your list of Hangouts contacts. Click the person’s name. You can also select multiple people if you want to start a group chat.
2. Once you’ve selected a contact, a chat window will open where you can type your message and upload videos and photos.

The video calling feature in Google Hangouts is similar to the messaging feature. Note that the number of par­tic­i­pants is limited to 10.

1. Open Google Hangouts and use the search bar or the Hangouts contact list to select the person you want to call. Click the name or multiple names (you can select up to 10 people for a group chat).
2. Click video call.
3. A video chat window will appear. First, allow access to your device’s camera and mi­cro­phone. You can then send an invite by sharing a copied link or you can invite more people to your video call by sending a message to their email address. During the video call, par­tic­i­pants can write short messages to each other from the chat window.
4. At the end of the video call, click on end.

To use Hangouts, you need a Google account, which you can create directly at google.com. You can either enter an existing email address or set up a new Gmail address free of charge. The advantage of a Gmail address is that your mailbox is linked directly to Hangouts and other Google services so that you can au­to­mat­i­cal­ly access your existing email contacts. If you’re going to use a different email account other than Gmail, you must first create or import it.

To use Hangouts, you’ll need a computer with an Internet con­nec­tion and a web browser or a mobile device with Internet access.

These days, users can choose from many platforms and ap­pli­ca­tions for messaging and video chatting. Like other companies, Google has been making changes to its video con­fer­enc­ing and messaging apps as the tech­nol­o­gy con­stant­ly improves: Google Meet (also part of Hangouts) is already available for video con­fer­enc­ing. The messaging app in Hangouts will be replaced by Google Chat to compete with Facebook Messenger and other al­ter­na­tives.

Google Chat is an excellent virtual col­lab­o­ra­tion tool. It helps teams share in­for­ma­tion ef­fi­cient­ly and is directly in­te­grat­ed with all Google Workspace ap­pli­ca­tions and Google Meet.

Hangouts is in­te­grat­ed into many of Google’s products. The icon for Google Hangouts is a green bubble with white double quotation marks. You can access Google Hangouts as follows:

You can easily use the Google Hangouts app on your smart­phone or tablet. The app is free and available for Android (in the Google Play Store) and iOS (in the App Store). Hangouts also comes pre-installed on many Android devices. The icon for the app is a green bubble with white double quotation marks in it.