Last August, Google delayed the classic Hangouts transition for G Suite customers into this year. Starting today, admins can migrate their users to Google Chat in earnest and get access to Gmail integration.
Google’s enterprise communication tools have seen a flurry of changes in recent weeks. The latest is a Progressive Web App for Google Chat that replaces the existing Electron client.
At last year’s Cloud Next, Google started testing the ability for Hangouts Chat users to contact people outside of their domain. Google Chat next week will gain the ability to invite any Gmail and Google Account as a guest.
Gmail on the desktop web today is home to more than just email. It’s long had text chat and video calling, while the last major redesign added Tasks integration. Google now looks to be bringing Chat, Meet, and Tasks functionality directly to Gmail for Android.
Hangouts Meet just got its much-needed rebrand to Google Meet amidst the surging popularity of videoconferencing tools in general. Alongside a trademark for that term, there’s another Hangouts product whose fate has yet to be decided. Hangouts Chat, the teams-focused Slack competitor from the Mountain View company, might also be getting a rebrand that does away with the troublesome Hangouts branding.
You’ve long been able to share your location with contacts in Hangouts chats, but the Google Hangouts for Android app is today getting a little smarter, noting when someone has asked where you are and automatically prompting you to share your location on a map.
Google indicates that this is merely the first step in building more intelligence into the app, describing it as “the start of something new.” Future versions of the app are thus likely to recognize more questions, offering the ability to answer them with a single tap.
The latest update to the app – which is rolling out during the course of the day – also offers a number of other new features …
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A message reported by a Google+ users suggests that Google’s rumored Babel integrated messaging service may be close to launch:
The screengrab posted by Patrick Dhawaan shows the message All conversations have been moved to the Trash. Because one or more are part of a Babel chat, these messages are still available in other Babel chat applications …
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p_jUltvwng]
As you know, Google Takeout, a recently introduced service, allows you to export your data from the Google cloud. For example, you can download an archive from Google Buzz, Picasa Web Albums, Contacts and Circles and Google Profile – even Google Voice. Beginning today, it is possible to pull your Gmail chats to an email client such as Thunderbird, via IMAP protocol.
Even though Gmail’s been working with your local email client via IMAP for ages, you were not able to retrieve chat logs – although they appear as email messages under the Chat label in the lefthand side of the web interface. Per Google’s blog post, recorded chat logs can now be downloaded to your local email client provided it’s configured to use IMAP. You only have to tick the “Show in IMAP” checkbox for Chats in the Labels tab of your Gmail settings. A step-by-step instructions in the video above.
