Google has just gifted Hangouts with a domain of its own on the web. Starting today, Hangouts is no longer stuck to Gmail and Google+. hangouts.google.com is where users can directly access the chat service for instant messaging, voice calls, and video chats.
Google has made it clear that, if Facebook can provide its Messenger with a stadalone service, then Hangouts will get its share of the pie as well. The company has been relentlessly rolling out one big upgrade after the other for Hangouts. It recently revamped Hangouts for mobile with Hangouts 4.0, by giving it a sleek new design and a simple interface.
Google though wants to lock horns with the Hangouts’ rivals such as WhatsApp, WeChat and Viber, its standalone chat service still lacks a feature that lets users knows who’s online, something which is a given on other services, and pretty much in popular demand.
Hangouts follows the fate of its distant cousin, Photos, which was relaunched as a standalone service after breaking away from Google+ and Gmail. However, Photos too has had its own share of controversies, with reports coming in, showing how the app continues to sync your photos to Google’s servers, even after you delete those photos or the app itself.
With Facebook boasting the Instagram and Messenger, Google surely is keen on scoring above its competitors on the preferential scale of the users by kicking out Hangouts and Photos from the confines of its major services.
Only time will tell though, as to how relentless Google is, in its bid to match others in possibly its only weak domain — Social networking.
