Google's relaunched Hangouts -- Wow.

The long-speculated consolidation of Google Talk, Google+ Hangouts, and Google Video Chat has finally occured, and it’s pretty spectacular.

My digital life is so dependent on Google services that it’s nice to find some cross-platform consolidation.

So what does the relaunch include?

One Android chat client to rule them all

Previously we had Google+ Hangouts and Google Talk on Android, now we’ve got one single “Hangouts” app.

This is a long-due overhaul for Google Talk, bringing emoji(!), rich-contact display, notification of whether messages are read or not, and (some sort of) SMS integration.

I’m not sure about how integrated SMS is, but so far the app has asked me to confirm my phone number.

The video chat integration is really nice and works well, though I’ve only tested it between two Android devices on the same Wi-Fi network.

I often find myself taking photos of things at lunch and then sending them via Gmail to my better half.. but now I can do all of that from within Hangouts, which means I’m not sending a 2.5mb jpeg, and there’s no break in the conversation.

One final thing worth mentioning is that there is now a share intent for Hangouts, so you can share links and things from your browser/gallery/etc. to Hangouts. That’s one feature people have wanted in Google Talk for a long time.

Find out more about Hangouts on Android

Hangouts in Google Chrome, but not in the browser window

This is a cool one, the Hangouts extension for Google Chrome runs in its own window, not stuck inside Google Chrome, so it’s a lot nicer than using Google Talk from within Gmail, or Google+ Hangouts.

I’ve been gradualling weening myself off of using AIM to talk to people over the past couple of years, and so I can quite gladly say that I’ll no longer need to use Mountain Lion’s Messages.app to talk on Gtalk. As Google Chrome is one of those apps that’s always open on my Mac, why would I need to use an additional app to use Hangouts?

Pretty awesome.

Find out more about Hangouts for Google Chrome

And for the iOS users..

Google have also brought Hangouts to iOS, which means there’s finally a good “Google Talk” client available there. I don’t use any iOS devices, but it does look quite nice.

Find out more about Hangouts for iOS

Find out more about the new Hangouts from Google