Good news for Google Apps for Business users: Google’s well-regarded Hangouts video chat service no longer requires you to have a Google+ profile, making it a more viable option for business users.
While Apps for Business customers have long been able to run Hangouts, the requirement to have a Google+ profile has been off-putting for some privacy-minded businesses. As well as removing that requirement, Google is also promising 99.9% uptime for the service for paying customers. Given my own experience with Hangouts — great when they work but frequently patchy — that will be an interesting one to watch.
Future plans for Google Apps for Business include the ability to connect a single Chromebox to two displays, remote management for Chromebox from outside the office and enhanced admin options. Google says those features will appear “in the coming months”.
Even more reasons to meet face-to-face [Google Enterprise Blog]
Comments
2 responses to “Google Hangouts Don’t Need Google+ Anymore”
Because it was terribly difficult to click a button and set everything to private 🙂
They only specify google apps, with no mention of whether all gmail users will get the same option. I’d quite like to use hangouts again if they open it up for all.
(also the android/ios apps still require a google+ profile, though that’s apparently going to change soon)
Soon G+ requirement for general gmail user will also go 🙂
Hangouts is pretty cool, but it still seems rather laggy, and last time I checked (a while ago now) the calls were basically hairpinned in and out of a media server that was routed to in the US (so no peer-to-peer). I wonder if this has since changed or is about to change…?