Google is bringing back a Hangouts feature that was removed in the company’s recent reorganization. The new feature will allow users to chat with one another without having to use a separate chat app. This will make it easier for people to stay connected and share ideas, thoughts, and experiences. The Hangouts feature was removed in order to make way for the Google Now Launcher, which is a new interface that uses voice commands to control your devices. The Hangouts feature was also seen as being too difficult to use and not as user-friendly as other chat apps.
Google announced this week that it is rolling out the ability to live stream a meeting to YouTube, without the use of any additional applications that would usually be required for streaming (like OBS). The feature will be available from the Activities panel, under a new option called Live Streaming.
The company said in a blog post, “Live streaming is useful in situations where you want to present information to large audiences outside of your organization, giving them the opportunity to pause and replay as needed, or view the presentation at a later time. To initiate a YouTube live stream through Meet you should have your YouTube channel approved for live streaming in advance.”
The live streaming feature is similar (if not identical) to Hangouts on Air, which used to allow people to stream Hangouts calls directly to YouTube. After Hangouts became Hangouts Meet, and then Google Meet, Hangouts on Air was lost in the shuffle. Google shut it down in 2019. Some of Google Meet’s competitors offer live streaming to video platforms, including Microsoft Teams and Zoom, so it’s surprising it took Google this long to bring back the feature.
Unfortunately, live streaming with Google Meet still isn’t as useful as Hangouts on Air was, especially if you’re using it with a personal Google account and not a paid Workspace account. Google Meet only allows meetings created from personal accounts to be one hour long, unless you pay up for Google One Premium, which costs $9.99 per month (and comes with other features).
Google says the feature is available to all currently-supported Google Workspace accounts and personal Google (Gmail) accounts, but it may take a few days to roll out to everyone. People with legacy G Suite or Workspace ‘Essentials’ accounts won’t be able to use live streaming.
Source: Google Workspace Updates
