Goodbye, Gmail Movie Talk
Mashable
Entertainment
If you love movie talking over Gmail the way you’ve been doing it since 2008, better wave your last goodbyes to your mate list.
Kicking off Monday, and continuing over the next few weeks, Google is going to be substituting Gmail movie talk with Google+ Hangouts. "Unlike the old movie talk, which was based on peer-to-peer technology, Hangouts utilize the power of Google’s network to produce higher reliability and enhanced quality," reads the explanatory blog post written by the Gmail team.
"You’ll be able to talk with all the same people you did before — and, in fact, with Hangouts you’ll now be able to reach them not only when they are using Gmail, but also if they are on Google+ in the browser or on their Android or iOS devices."
The search giant is anxious to promote the use of its social network, and has in the past attempted to blur the lines inbetween users of Gmail, Google Maps and other Google services. If you’re logged into any of them, the company says, you’re logged into Google+.
Nefarious network-boosting purposes aside, Google Hangouts is clearly a superior technology. In our practice, Gmail movie talk had a tendency to stutter and sometimes abandon — a quality collective in the past with iChat movie, but not with Apple’s Facetime, Skype or Google Hangouts.
Hangouts also scales a lot better, making it much lighter to add fresh people to the meeting. Audio is spectacularly good at long range. It’s likely the best choice for a company looking for a free alternative to Cisco Telepresence, for example.
And then there’s the feature that the Gmail team hints at in its blog — the capability to add moustaches, beards, halos and other individual decorations — not to mention cat and dog masks — which will show up to go after you across the talk.
Are you sad to see Gmail movie talk go, or excited to see how Hangouts can boost your Gmail practice? Let us know in the comments.