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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

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wccrawford

G+ launched with Group video chat (in the Hangouts feature) with no fanfare at all, as it if was nothing.

FB's announcement today has spent a lot of time talking about how much work it was to implement...

It's got to be a huge kick in the pants to them. I kind of feel bad for them.

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Apple does this every release. Marketing is important.

Facebook is now the ubiquitous video chat social network, built on Skype. Google+ is Circles on your Gmail. Everything else you say requires some level of convincing.

Except that Hangout is a lot more social than the Facebook/Skype integration. Google+ has out-social'ed Facebook.

"A lot more social" is pretty vague.

Facebook is showing the signs of its alliance to Microsoft in more ways than one here.

I see one way (using Skype, although apparently that started some time ago). What are the other ways?

Downloading .exe files to Linux computers seems to be a very Microsofty thing to do.

I SERIOUSLY doubt MS was giving them architectural guidance on how to make this work. Probably would have more to do with the architectural experience of the devs.

I wasn't suggesting that MS told them to do that. To my knowledge, this first time that Facebook has left the Web and launched a feature only available to specific OSs by way of desktop applications.

Remember that this video chat is not a web page. It's a Microsoft (and Apple? I don't know) desktop application that integrates into their web page.

I'm suggesting that Facebook is showing their alliance to Microsoft by ignoring some other OSs and launching Microsoft-powered features. If you include video chat as an integral part of Facebook, then you can no longer call Facebook a web site.

Thanks. That wasn't clear from your earlier post (and I didn't know that this was a desktop app either).

:) To be fair, G+'s Hangouts is also currently a desktop app (requires the Gtalk plugin I think). I suspect Google will move away from that and go towards a full web page. We'll see. This is all so exciting.

Yes but they at least provide the appropriate plugin for Linux users.

Yep! I was Hanging Out on Ubuntu with 6 friends on about day 2 of G+. Facebook doesn't even support my OS, so there's absolutely 0 chance I'll use their video chat.

Did Google show their alliance to Microsoft when they released Chrome for Windows well ahead of other platforms?

Things I see them both doing: playing catch-up, stumbling on user experience, appealing to the lowest common denominator rather than the leading edge.

Hangouts is group video. Huddle is group text chats, which for some reason is mobile only and has no web interface. No one uses it 'cause not everyone has an Android device.

I meant group video chat. Thanks for catching that. I've updated my comment.

I've used this video chat feature, well, looks like something done in hurry. Quality kind of sucks

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