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Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

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Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#111
post #101

I would rather audio text message. I want something like Glide, but without video. Sometimes a txt doesn't do it, but I don't want to enter into the time-consuming ceremony of a phone call/voicemail.

My company, my family, and my friends all use Voxer for this. It's a great free push-to-talk style chat app, and we love the hybrid a/synchronous model of communication.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#112
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GChat in Gmail still does voice calls as you described them. I use it all the time.

Not if you upgraded to hangouts.

Hangouts still has it, it's just different. Click the search button, then click the Phone button.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#114
post #6

According to /r/android this also finally brings Google Voice into Hangouts: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2fz6hh/hangouts_and... I haven't seen the update yet to try it, but am hoping I do soon. This is long, long overdue. All this said - Hangouts on desktop is still so much worse than GChat was - and GChat had free calls too. I'd type a number, two seconds later it would be ringing in the bottom right co…

But GChat can not work in Chrome 64 bit... I hate Desktop hangout. Whenever i want to make a call, i have to go to IE11... oohh google....

i embrace this change so now i can make call using my Nexus 7. awesome. it's like having another phone.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#115
post #110

Free in price perhaps, but I'm not sure how readily I'm going to start using this. Call me paranoid but voice calls are probably the one part of my life right now that Google don't have access to. I just don't know how I feel about handing another piece of information over to them. It's not even that it's Google - I'd say the same thing for any other corporation trying this. I removed Facebook from my phone for this…

You should know it's an open secret now that the NSA has racks of hardware at telecom data centers which record your calls and has for a while. On the other hand the big corps don't care unless they can profit from it. Privacy by apathy.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#116
post #55
post #6

According to /r/android this also finally brings Google Voice into Hangouts: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2fz6hh/hangouts_and... I haven't seen the update yet to try it, but am hoping I do soon. This is long, long overdue. All this said - Hangouts on desktop is still so much worse than GChat was - and GChat had free calls too. I'd type a number, two seconds later it would be ringing in the bottom right co…

I end up missing incoming calls because of this - it takes 3-5 seconds for the call to be answered from when I click the accept button. It was much better before.

Same here. Someone calls, I press Accept, and it could take up to 10 seconds to actually accept the call. It would open a new window, start loading stuff, and then the call was missed by the time it was ready. How could anything like that get past the QA team?

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#117

"it’s free to call numbers in the U.S. and Canada" It's great that expensive international calls are a thing of the past by now but is this really the right way to go? I'm in the UK - do I have to pay international rates to call UK numbers or will I just not be able to call from the UK 'yet'?

Have you checked the actual Hangout rates? The "international rate" I'll pay for Belgian numbers is lower than what I'm paying locally.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#118
post #6

According to /r/android this also finally brings Google Voice into Hangouts: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2fz6hh/hangouts_and... I haven't seen the update yet to try it, but am hoping I do soon. This is long, long overdue. All this said - Hangouts on desktop is still so much worse than GChat was - and GChat had free calls too. I'd type a number, two seconds later it would be ringing in the bottom right co…

I stand 100% behind your statement. I can't stand to use Hangouts. I remember when you could simply have a video chat plugin installed in Google Chat with HD feature enabled in labs and CPU usage wouldn't be a quarter what a video chat in Hangouts is now. I dream that they still had the option to use the older video chat functionality.

I don't understand why hangouts has to use so much CPU. I have a top of the line, brand new laptop, and using hangouts never fails to heat it up and get the fans going.

In contrast, a multi-way video chat on http://appear.in has much more stable audio and video quality, somehow doesn't require half of my CPU, and doesn't even require a plugin.

My team is distributed, and we use hangouts every day, so this has not been a one-time experience, and it has been like this for years at this point.

Re: Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

#119
post #115
post #110

Free in price perhaps, but I'm not sure how readily I'm going to start using this. Call me paranoid but voice calls are probably the one part of my life right now that Google don't have access to. I just don't know how I feel about handing another piece of information over to them. It's not even that it's Google - I'd say the same thing for any other corporation trying this. I removed Facebook from my phone for this…

You should know it's an open secret now that the NSA has racks of hardware at telecom data centers which record your calls and has for a while. On the other hand the big corps don't care unless they can profit from it. Privacy by apathy.

Certainly this makes it easier on the government if they really wanted your calls.
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