Google has released an update to its internet chat tool, Hangouts, to give a stiff competition to Microsoft Team and Slack Technologies. Dubbed as Hangouts, the App is now available as a core G Suite service.
Google claims that through this service, teams will be able to collaborate easily and efficiently. The service will allow to track progress and follow up tasks. Users can upload items from Drive, collaborate on Docs, Sheets or Slides, join online meetings with Hangouts Meet and look up room members, past conversations and shared files.
The service also utilises artificial intelligence to speed up manual work like booking conference rooms, searching for files and more. Chat currently supports 28 languages and each room can support up to 8,000 members.It’s available on the desktop for Windows and MacOS, as well as iOS and Android.
Furthermore, Chat builds on G Suite’ssecurity-firstecosystem and offers an enterprise-grade solution that’s reliable and compliant. The service also comes integrated with Vault so that admins can archive, preserve, search and export Chat-specific data.
With this, Hangouts Chat is all set to take a head-on-head competition to Microsoft Teams and Slack, which also offer similar features. The Microsoft Teams was introduced in November 2016, which allow teams to come together to share information and content. The service is an integral part of Office 365 and it is available in 181 countries and in 18 languages to commercial customers with Office 365 Enterprise or Business plans.
IDC estimates that Slack generated $102 million in revenue in 2016, up 242 percent from 2015. Microsoft remains the leader in the space with 36.8 percent market share compared to Slack’s 5.3 percent hold, according to IDC.