Notified by a SMS received, I picked my phone and opened the Hangouts app, where I receive all sms or data messages. I was sadly prompted by the following message: ” Check out Google new SMS app”.
From my experience, this is bad news for Hangouts. Why would they promoting the new app so aggressively while the past few years they brought sms into hangouts app and made it better ?
I think Hangouts it is the best app for communication: sending SMS messages, data text messages, video calls, video conferences, and it is completely free. It works on all platforms, does not require an app to be installed on computer or any odd plugins.
Compared to Skype, despite it is not that popular, it is better in many ways. Skype android app is very buggy and get a lot of crashes. You have to install a separate app to get it working and you cannot integrate it in other messaging programs. They just launched a web app but it requires a lot of microsoft plugins and addons to be added to the browser, and it only works on windows. You can only do video with 1 other person. If you want a video conference you have to pay a subscription .
The question I do not have the answer for is: They only take SMS away or they are really planning to kill it like many other good Google projects ( Google reader for example ).
