Hangouts is conveniently available in your Gmail inbox, and on it’s website along with Android and iOS apps. The availability on all platforms makes keeping up with all your friends easy and convenient. Due to the extreme saturation of Google(Gmail) accounts in the United States, you remove the hassle of having someone sign up for a new service to be able to chat.

Hangouts video calls were the first video calling platform where you could have more than two people in one call, for free. Hangouts on Air is a feature which allows a call to be broadcast over YouTube which is great for meetings of leaders in a group where all the participants can participate in chats with the members of the call. There are also apps for video calls which allow participants to do interactive activities with each other. There is a YouTube app which enables participants to watch videos together and it auto mutes so you can hear the sound from the video but you can override it with the click of a button. There are also games and a remote assistance app.

Hangout is also great for group chats because it syncs between both desktop computers and to phones. You can start a conversation on your phone and finish it on a laptop. On computers, you don’t have to install a dedicated program to chat all you have to do is you your web browser which can save space on your machine and it’s convenient due to it being close to your browsing. If you do wish to have a dedicated Google Hangouts app on your computer, you can download a chrome app to enable this. The chrome app is a floating icon that is overlaid on top of all other programs making it readily accessible to whatever you are doing. There are also stickers which can add a fun interactive layer to chatting.

Overall, Google Hangouts is a great way to keep in contact across multiple platforms for free. With its ability to work across any device and its interactive features and large video chat sizes leave rivals in the dust in terms of capabilities and on price which is 100% free.