The Verge has produced a fantastic seven and a half minute video explaining the new Google Hangouts, featuring actual Google employees. I recommend you watch that, because what I’m about to say is going to be all negative from here on out.

First, Google Hangouts is Project Babel. The company was tired of having Google Talk, Google Hangouts (old version), Google+ Messanger, Google Voice, and a myriad of other services. Now they just have Hangouts, and it’s basically a WhatsApp clone, but with video chat.

Unlike WhatsApp, you need a Google+ account to use Hangouts. Forget about signing in with your phone number, that feature isn’t here, at least not in this version one release. Also, whereas Google Talk worked on the open XMPP standard, so you could talk to someone using Google Talk on practically any chat application written, in order to use Hangouts you have to install Hangouts.

Full stop.

Had Hangouts come out a few years ago, the world would have been excited, but like The Verge says, some people use iMessage, others use WhatsApp, others use LINE, some use Facebook Messanger, and the list just goes on and on. Google is trying to get people to use Google+ by making an incredibly capable messaging client, now it’s just up to the people to decide whether or not they want to make a Google+ account.