There was a lot of skepticism towards Google Hangouts when the service first launched, and many were convinced that it was just a temporary phase in the company’s many experiments, one that would quickly go away after it doesn’t get anywhere. However, that was far from the case – many people apparently enjoyed Hangouts quite a bit and kept using it, so Google have been continuing their work on the service, releasing various new updates for it.
The latest major milestone was just hit recently, with version 3.0 which added various new features such as new contact cards, improved performance, and revisions in the interface. The new update is already being deployed, and users should be able to see the changes immediately. The interface has been touched up nicely, with the snooze notification moved to a different location, and a new highlight color for the checkboxes.
Various bugs have been addressed as well, including a commonly reported one which caused the volume levels to be changed while in a conversation. Other than that, Google have fixed many smaller issues with the service, and it should now run much more smoothly and without any stability issues.
As we said above, contact cards have been improved significantly, with many more options for their use that should give users more flexibility and control over the feature. The new contact cards are more deeply integrated with Google+, retrieving contact information, profile pictures and other details about contacts, including the last time the user has interacted with a specific person.
All in all, Google have polished Hangouts quite nicely with this update, not only adding many small features and changes that have been requested by their users for some time now, but also pushing the service forward towards a more streamlined, optimized version. At this point it’s clear that Google don’t plan on abandoning Hangouts anytime soon, and it may even develop into a popular messaging platform if they put a little more work into promoting it.
There have been rumors that Google have other big changes planned coming up soon, and they were supposed to go in this update but had to be delayed. According to those rumors, this is actually the reason the update was given the 3.0 version number, even though it’s objectively not that major compared to other updates that have been released for Hangouts before.
In any case, Google will probably give a heads-up if they’re working on any major new features, so their users should be on the lookout for new posts soon if the rumors are true. If that’s the case, Google won’t be shy to reveal what else they’ve got planned for their users.