A great product for its time!
May 19, 2021
A great product for its time!
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Google Hangouts (Classic)
Google Hangouts (Classic) has now been superseded by the more modern Google Chat and is therefore not compatible with Google Workspace for Education. Prior to Google Chat being widely used, Hangouts was used at our school for inter-staff communications and well as a way for students to communicate with their teachers. This was particularly heavily used during the first lock down in March 2020. It offers a quick instant messaging service with the ability to make calls or video calls within the app.
Pros
- Has built in calling and video calling from within the app or web page
- Can be used by anyone with a Google account
- On Android phones, can be used to receive SMS messages as well
Cons
- Has now been superseded by Google Chat
- Does not work with Google for Education accounts
- No longer integrated with Gmail after the phase out completes
- Audio calling
- Video calling in app
- Access to global directory to be able to contact students easily
- Allowed quick communication between staff where a formal email is not required saving money on internal phones
- Has now been disabled on Google Workspace for Education so training required to enable staff to use Google Chat and Meet
- Prior to Chat, it had a positive impact by allowing students to contact their teachers for free during remote learning.
For its time, Google Hangouts (Classic) was a fantastic product and matched up well with all of its successors. Now however, with it having been phased on within Workspace for Education, I would not advise any new users use the product.
Google Chat, combined with Google Meet, have superseded Hangouts (Classic) and should be used by default due to their close knit integration with Gmail.
Google Chat, combined with Google Meet, have superseded Hangouts (Classic) and should be used by default due to their close knit integration with Gmail.
Do you think Google Hangouts (Classic) delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Google Hangouts (Classic)'s feature set?
Yes
Did Google Hangouts (Classic) live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Google Hangouts (Classic) go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Google Hangouts (Classic) again?
No
Comments
Please log in to join the conversation