Google splits Hangouts into 'Chat' and 'Meet' to take on Slack

Google finally looks ready with a clear strategy for all its messaging products- Duo, Allo, Meet, Chat and Hangouts. At its Google Cloud Next Conference, the company gave an enterprise cover for Hangouts and stated Allo/Duo as its consumer communications apps.

Starting with Hangouts, Google is splitting it into two: Hangouts Chat, which is clearly aimed at taking on Slack, and Hangouts Meet, which is all about video and audio communications. Those two are basically the enterprise versions of Allo and Duo.

While Meet is generally already available, Chat is going into Google’s early access program and will be rolled out at a later date. Notably, your current Hangouts app isn’t going away just yet but its just a matter of time.

Coming to Hangouts Chat, the app is very much on the lines of Slack and is all about team messaging. Some of the available features include generating a simple, shareable web address that anyone can join without needing to download an app or plugin; providing a unique dial-in phone number for conference calls; supporting larger meeting sizes; having search that parses through all messages and rooms while filtering by individual or file type; featuring custom workflows; integrating with G Suite; and implementing data-loss prevention with administrative controls made for the enterprise.

Google is also launching a bot that makes it easier to find meeting times to showcase what these integrations can look like.

As for Meet, it aims at getting into a meeting as easy as possible. Ideally, it’ll just take one click and you’re in your meeting, whether that’s a video or audio one. The service will work without any plugins and Google has attested to the fact that it wont be particularly heavy on your battery life. Meanwhile, you can also record meetings and each of the meetings will be provided with a dial-in number so as to ensure that all you have to do is to click on the number to dial into a meeting.