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Comment by masnick | Hacker News Reader

I understand this; that's what I meant by "I understand that Google Apps is a different beast".

Regardless, to the average end user this distinction doesn't matter. I think users will gravitate to what works well and what their friends use.

I really hope this is Google Hangouts instead of Facebook Messages (ugggh).

iMessages has problems of its own (TERRIBLE sync between devices), but it has the huge advantage of working for everyone with an iDevice.

What I really want:

1) a service that works seamlessly between any device (like iMessages is supposed to for iOS and OS X)

2) this service should be platform-agnostic, working on any computer or mobile device

3) it should be federated like Jabber so we don't have to depend on one company

4) comparable features with the existing services: read receipts, group chat, push notifications

I hope Google Hangouts is exactly this, and that they let me enable it for my Google Apps account.

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Other than number 3, this seems to match hangouts, assuming it works as they say (in a way iMessage doesn't seem to for you). The killer missing feature for me is SMS though, a vast majority of people cannot use Hangouts for the vast majority of their conversations because of the Google+ requirement.

You're saying you'd like SMS integration? So if you add your friend with a dumb phone to your Hangout, they can participate via SMS?

That would be awesome. I have a few friends with dumb phones that are constantly left out of iMessage conversations. I feel bad about it, but not bad enough to inconvenience myself (or pay for an SMS plan; yes I'm a terrible person).

Edit: The federation thing is probably a pipe dream. No one has an incentive for supporting a federated protocol -- at this point it's either existing platforms going for lock-in (the iOS lock-in caused by iMessages is huge; it's the biggest reason I don't consider Android). I guess what I really want is iMessages that works on Android and over SMS, and doesn't suck at syncing between devices.

Sure, that's one use of it. But also friends with smartphones but not Google+, those I communicate with by SMS or WhatsApp primarily at the moment, the majority of my contacts. It's not even that I want rid of my SMS plan, although I can definitely see the benefit of that too.

We basically want the same thing - iMessages that works on Android, iOS and desktop, including SMS. Google are brilliant at sync and I have no doubts that'll work great (especially now with synced notifications). If they added SMS and starting a conversation by phone number (selecting from contacts obviously), it'd be the perfect messaging app in my opinion.

EDIT: Hangouts on web only work with Chrome, so that rules out a lot of devices I thought were supported. Not a big deal for me, but I guess it could break your requirements depending.

Hangouts on web should work on other browsers too, obviously some better than others, but work nonetheless.

https://groupme.com/ may be able to help with your scenario.

One of my biggest hopes in life is that someone with good project management experience puts something up on kickstarter to build really really good clients for a federated videochat/messaging system (could even be based on xmpp) for every single major platform (osx, windows, android, iOS, WM, html5/browser) so that we can finally ditch all these terrible walled gardens (SMS, Skype, FaceTime, iMessage, BBM, Google Talk, AIM, WhatsApp, Facebook Chat, Twitter DMs, ad nauseam) once and for all.

If you do it before I find the time, please don't forget the end-to-end encryption and synchronization of read items across devices.

It's frustrating because so many are so close. iMessage/FaceTime would be the end-all if it were federated and supported on multiple platforms, because they came the closest to getting it right (but stopped just short of doing the thing that's best for customers versus the thing that's best for Apple).

This is what I was hoping Hangouts would be, almost. There's a couple things there I wouldn't expect Google to do, and that I wouldn't miss too much. But you're right, Apple is close and I just wanted Google to do exactly what they've done, without the complaints people have with syncing (which is something Google are awesome at anyway) and across devices. They came so close, but lack of SMS means it's not really uniting anything. It's just another option for a way to communicate with some, but not all people. So close, but so far.

They're not done yet.

According to my G+ stream, Amit Singhal has announced that Hangouts is also going to be the future of Google Voice. And apparently you can already choose to get SMS messages from Hangouts when you are idle. A less important piece of SMS integration, to be sure, but that certainly looks like a starting point.

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