Google Hangouts Confirmed As the Future of Google Voice
It was just last week during the I/O developers conference that Google unveiled Hangouts to the world. What was previously dubbed as “Babel” is now a new cross-platform unified messaging service available for use. While the service didn’t integrate all of Google’s messaging services at the time of launch, we now know that Hangouts is in fact, “the future of Google Voice” according to Nikhyl Singhal’s Google+ page. Here’s what he had to say:
Hangouts, phone calls and Google Voice
Thanks for all of your feedback on last week’s Hangouts launch. I wanted to quickly talk about 1) making/receiving phone calls in Gmail, and 2) Google Voice support more generally.
1) Today’s version of Hangouts doesn’t yet support outbound calls on the web and in the Chrome extension, but we do support inbound calls to your Google Voice number. We’re working hard on supporting both, and outbound/inbound calls will soon be available. In the meantime, you can continue using Google Talk in Gmail.
2) Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making/receiving phone calls is just the beginning. Future versions of Hangouts will integrate Google Voice more seamlessly.
This announcement comes at perfect timing for anyone who has been waiting for a Google Voice update or is ready to make Hangouts their sole messaging service.
