>You forgot Hangouts, which works on Android, iOS, and the desktop. It supports text, voice, and video, just like Wire. Its only negative from my personal viewpoint is no Windows Phone support, but that OS is the punchline of many jokes these days.

Have you ever tried to start a Hangout with a non-technical user? It's a nightmare.

I do remote tutoring. Skype is easy. Everyone has it, you add the username, and call.

Here's what happens when I try to do a hangout:

1. Log in to gmail. Student often takes a while to find gmail on computer and login, as they've been doing everything by phone. 2. Find the chat. Student often takes 2-3 minutes to look for chat. 3. Invite to chat. Your @domain address? No, my personal gmail. 4. Show in chat list. 5. "Send me a message". This takes them another 2-3 minutes to figure out. 6. Start a call. Another delay. 7. Often some kind of technical trouble where the call doesn't start, mic doesn't work, they must by mistake.

This is exacerbated because I'm giving instructions by text. Starting a hangout with a new user on a computer often takes 5-15 minutes. Every step has potential for failure.

If there's a better way than what I'm doing, the fact that I don't know about it is itself is a UI failure on Google's part.

> Have you ever tried to start a Hangout with a non-technical user?

Yes, my technophobe sister in law. She got a new Android phone and was texting me via plain old SMS, which are metered on her account. I texted her back "Look for an icon that is a green circle with a double quote mark in it. Open it, follow the prompts, and send me a message". Within a minute I had a Hangout message from her, and she's been using it since.

Purely anecdotal, but then so was your example. I'll agree it's not so simple doing it on a computer, but they still make it fairly simple; do a Google search for "hangouts", the top link takes you to a page that has a button that says "Available for your computer".

I can't edit the original post. I meant to write, but didn't "ever tried to start a Hangout on a computer with a non-technical user"

I agree the phone is easier.

If all your students have a Google account and an email address, it's rather easy:

1. Open https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_ to create a new Hangout

2. Copy the permanent link that is shown in the dialog, or enter mail addresses to invite.

3. Students open the link. A login is required to join the Hangout, this could be improved...

There is also an extension for Chrome - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hangouts/nckgahada...

Thanks! That's far simpler. Though it should be more obvious that option exists.

Bingo. My 80-year-old grandmother who is terrified of computers and doesn't speak english recently started having video skype sessions with me. As far as I'm concerned, that's a design and ease-of-use litmus test.

Hangouts is getting worse as far as I'm concerned.

Google Talk had only chat, but I could trust it to work as intended and deliver my messages. With Hangouts:

- synchronization between devices is not as good. I will often not see everything I typed on my mobile when I open it on my desktop.

- Messages do not arrive in order !!! Sorry for the triple exclamation marks, but this is implemented in the most stupid way I have ever seen in an IM application. Say we are using Hangouts on my mobile. You send the messages

    A
    B
    C

Occasionally, I will receive C first, then A, then B. Fine. I receive C and read it.

    C
    <--- I've read until this point and will ignore anything above

Then I receive A and B. And this happens :

    A
    B
    C
    <--- I've read until this point and will ignore anything above

Messages A and B, having been sent before, will appear above the last message I have read and I will probably miss them.

I preferred Google Talk as well, especially since it was built upon an open platform and was easily implemented on unsupported OSes (Windows Phone via IM+ for example). Personally I haven't seen the out-of-order issue in one on one conversations, but it's prevalent in the group chats I'm in. When it happens to my messages, it's almost always when I'm being handed off between towers on the go; it hasn't happened to me on WLAN yet. Since there are no message size limitations like SMS has, I rarely send multi part messages anyway.

>You forgot Hangouts, which works on Android, iOS, and the desktop. It supports text, voice, and video, just like Wire.

So that would be the "what's hot now".

I didn't mention it because few people I know use it. And I wouldn't touch it a Google + Google+ affilicated messaging solution with a 10-feet pole anyway...

I wouldn't say that it's "hot". It's recently become more popular since Google started forcing it on Android 4.4+ users as the only SMS option on their phones. Personally, I wouldn't use it at all if not for easy group communication with my Ingress mates (most Ingress communities use Hangouts, Slack, or both; ours uses both but mostly Hangouts).

I just felt that it was a glaring omission, especially considering its more popular and more reliable precursor, Google Talk.