Google has launched a cross-platform messaging app, letting users to have video chats, send text messages and swap pictures between Android and iOS devices as well its Chrome web browser.
The service replaces Google Talk, and puts the internet giant in direct competition with WhatsApp, Skype, BBM, Tango and Facebook’s own Chat Heads service.
The Google Hagouts app will store past conversations on Google’s servers. It also offers a search box where a user can type a name, email, phone number or name of a circle to see more contacts.
Google has also introduced 850 new hand-drawn emoticons and the service notifies the user of the other person typing a message. Users can customise how theyreceive Hangout notifications, who can send requests, or directly initiate hangouts and block people they don’t want to talk to.
Notifications are synced across devices which means that a conversation started on the web can continue with it on a phone, but the web interaction will also get updated.
Rise of chat apps
Chat apps have grown in popularity in recent years, offering a free wi-fi based alternative to text messages- helping people avoid mobile operator charges.
Last month. The Financial Times reported that there were more instant messages being sent daily by the end of last year than there were text messages.
In terms of figures it asserts that 41 billion app, based messages will be sent each day this year – that’s double the number of text messages.
The data, collected for the Financial Times by telecoms and media consultancy Informa, highlighted the rapid rise of a technology that did not exist five years ago but is seen by some as a potential challenger to Facebook’s dominance in social networking.
According to the data, 19 billion messages were sent each day in 2012 via chat apps compared to 17.6 billion from SMS. This highlights the huge growth chat apps have experienced in recent months as users look to avoid SMS fees, and those numbers are only projected to grow.
Informa believes chat apps will receive 50 billion messages each day by 2014 compared to 21 billion texts. The increase is in part due to the proliferation of smartphones.
Watch the app in action below:
