If you’re a Hangouts user, you’ll already know the service is quite useful; not only does it enable real-time chat between participants, but you can audio and video chat as well. Ausdroid used Hangouts internally for quite some time when it was released, and it’s only more recently we’ve migrated to another service (Telegram, for those interested) because it offers us a little bit more flexibility and power.
However, Hangouts remains a staple for many users, and Google is only too aware of the shortcomings of the service. Google’s product manager for Google Voice, Mayur Kamat, has taken to Google+ to talk about their plans for the service. In particular, Mayur said:
It has been a long journey till here. And it is just getting started. There is some amount of pride to see something you started reach such a huge milestone. But most of it is the responsibility of meeting and exceeding user expectations. Your feedback, be it here on G+, or in Play Store reviews or via in-app mechanism helps drive our roadmap. So please keep it coming.
P.S. Unlike what the /r/Android subreddit says, the Hangouts team does come to work every morning trying to make it better :). Good stuff is coming.
We’re really looking forward to seeing what’s coming up on Hangouts’ roadmap. There’s some glaring omissions which competing services like Telegram and Slack have already got, such as the ability to transfer any file, not just images, and an API for programmatic integration. For example, on Telegram, we have Ausdroid_bot, which notifies editors of new pending posts, and monitors our todo lists so we stay on top of ideas.
If Hangouts could offer users that level of integration, with the features users are demanding, the service will become a whole lot more appealing for new users, and former users alike.
