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Last night, Google finally unveiled its much awaited unified messaging system for iOS, Android and Chrome – Hangouts. While many people had hoped that Hangouts will completely replace Whatsapp, Google Talk and the traditional SMS for them. However, Hangouts, in its current stage, is definitely not capable of fulfilling that promise.
Currently, two of the biggest issues with Hangouts is that it lacks support for SMS and the lack of integration with Google Voice. Thankfully, Hangouts community manager – Dori Storbeck – has confirmed that SMS integration is coming soon, which is, unsurprisingly, the most requested feature.
Considering how Facebook Messenger and Apple’s iMessage neatly integrate SMS and messaging service inside a single app, Hangouts should have been able to do this right from the get-go.
While SMS integration should be coming to Hangouts soon, Google Voice integration might take some time. In the Verge’s inside hangouts article, Nikhyl Singhal, confirmed that Google Voice integration is coming to Hangouts, and that “this is the future for Google Voice”. He did not offer any specific timeframe as to when we should expect the integration to happen, though.
