Re:Hangouts for iOS
by mcintyre1994 on Wednesday May 15, 2013 @08:07PM
(#5715962)
This is what I was hoping Hangouts would be, almost. There's a couple things there I wouldn't expect Google to do, and that I wouldn't miss too much. But you're right, Apple is close and I just wanted Google to do exactly what they've done, without the complaints people have with syncing (which is something Google are awesome at anyway) and across devices. They came so close, but lack of SMS means it's not really uniting anything. It's just another option for a way to communicate with some, but not all people. So close, but so far.
They're not done yet.
According to my G+ stream, Amit Singhal has announced that Hangouts is also going to be the future of Google Voice. And apparently you can already choose to get SMS messages from Hangouts when you are idle. A less important piece of SMS integration, to be sure, but that certainly looks like a starting point.
If you do it before I find the time, please don't forget the end-to-end encryption and synchronization of read items across devices.
It's frustrating because so many are so close. iMessage/FaceTime would be the end-all if it were federated and supported on multiple platforms, because they came the closest to getting it right (but stopped just short of doing the thing that's best for customers versus the thing that's best for Apple).