Google Hangouts is great, but will it ever be finished?

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A year ago Google released project Babel. The search giant shared with us a grand vision of a unified and improved messaging and video platform. This vision started becoming reality with Google Hangouts. But in classic Google fashion, it was never finished.

Before Hangouts, there was Google Talk. And it was great. It was simple, and to the point. You could use it in third-party applications, it worked in your Gmail, and complaints were hard to come by. However, Google had been working on Google+ and that also had a chat -- one that was not compatible with Talk. So, Google promised unification; and when the users of Talk looked at their perfectly working service, and then back at Google skeptically, Google promised an unrivaled experience across platforms.

And that is when Hangouts was released. It was there (optionally) in your Gmail, it was in your  Google+ (well, for a significantly smaller population), and it was on your phone. It was also in your Chrome. And this is where the head-scratching starts. Google released a Hangouts extension for the Chrome store that put Hangouts on your desktop, and outside of Chrome. But Google also announced Chrome apps "for your Desktop". These apps run in a window outside of the browser, and Google nudged developers toward them. Google itself even made a Keep desktop app, but not one for Hangouts.

Unification was the theme of Babel, and was specifically aimed at Google+. If you have used the video call in Gmail or Google+ you will be familiar with the popup window that houses the call. There is an option in that window to chat with the members of the call. But this option doesn’t open a Hangouts dialog, it opens a blank, antique looking chat interface.

Imagine this: I am chatting with my friend in Hangouts in Gmail. She types, "Hey, I want to show you something real quick", so I click on the video button and we start a video hangout. Now, imagine she wants to send me a link, or just write something while we talk. Would we want a completely new chat window, or would we want to see the conversation we were just having? Google seems to say we would want a new, blank chat window.

hangoutscGoogle seems like it just doesn’t care about these seemingly little things. For example the bazillion emoticons Google paraded so proudly aren't even bug free; the recent tab doesn't remember the ones I use most, doesn't sync across devices, and is sometimes just blank. Oh, and the new emoticons are obviously not present in the weird chat dialog that accompanies Hangout video calls.

Google did a lot of things right with Hangouts, but some things just seem like easily fixed oversights. Here's a bonus bug: in Google+ you can expand the Hangouts window so far up that you can't see the controls anymore. Resizing the chat window is a great, and relatively-unique, feature, Google just can't get it to be perfect.

You ever get a disappointed feeling, when watching team like the New York Jets, and think to yourself, I could run this better? Well, that’s how I feel looking at Hangouts. I certainly couldn't make it worse.

I am using this as just an example of a Google-wide problem. Googlers are so focused on 'the next big thing,' that they can't seem to get themselves to finish what they have already started. Even the Google redesign that spanned Gmail, Drive, Search, and more hasn't been finished. For example go create a new label in Gmail, you won't find a nice button like the UI would suggest, but a bland link. Developers can attest to many services, such as the App Engine, still stuck in the old UI. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

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Google nurtures wonderful ideas, I wish it would just see them through all the way to the end.

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