I don't get it. It just feels like they are trying to do too much too soon. I don't know any other than marketers who are building content on Google+ and I wonder what their engagement metrics look like.
Another thing is for conference calls, there are already several free and dead easy solutions out there, so its unclear who this is aimed at.
What's not to get? This is clearly the leading free multi-way video conferencing solution. My team recently ditched Skype's paid version; it was flaky as all hell, while hangouts is rock solid. This brings me and 6 other people back to google+ every day. It also got 5 of those 6 people to sign up for google+ at all.
So given:
- "hangouts" is a compelling product with early traction (anecdotal but strong)
- it drives continued engagement to their strategic product
- it accelerates google+ adoption by providing a concrete reason for people to register there, because "that's where the meeting is"
Therefore, the right thing to do is to invest more in hangouts.
If Google+ is aimed to be a utility then yes, I agree with your point of view. But if they are looking to create a competing product to Facebook then, I am not sure that creating a free multi-way video conferencing solution is the going to help. And, I feel, users who signup to Google+ to use this free service, are not likely to adopt Google+ for their social networking needs just because they are using this free utility.
I agree that Google may acquire a few new users with this but this cannot help them compete with Facebook. They need to get the core (the critical mass, social sharing dynamics etc.) right where as, I feel, they are investing in building utilities to get users which they are not getting based on the basic social networking product.
This is what I meant when I said "I don't get it".
I wouldn't say Google+ is a utility, I'd say that Google+ is about integrating existing and new services that Google offers so that the overall package is more useful and more compelling. For instance, there is integrated support for jointly watching a YouTube video or sharing and editing a Google Doc from a Hangout (though, oddly, the first requires an ordinary Hangout and the second requires Hangouts with Extras).
The reason Google+ is primarily social is that, before Google+, most of Google's services were, at best, poorly integrated from a social perspective (if they were socially integrated at all). That naturally encroaches on Facebook because they provide a number of social services, but the more I look at it, the less I think Google+ is about "beating Facebook". I think it is more about addressing weaknesses in Google's service portfolio that Facebook (and Twitter, etc.) have highlighted. And that can be done without "beating" or "replacing" alternative social services.
For example, one thing Google+ is very good for is for interacting with Google engineers and product teams. That's a part of Google+ that has nothing to do with Facebook (or Twitter, etc.), but is still social and very valuable to Google.
What OS and browser are you using this on? On Mac OS X 10.6.x and Safari 4(?) Google Hangout would consistently crash after a few minutes of use. We use video and audio conferencing a lot, so an alternative that actually works to iChat and Skype (hate the new Skype UI) would be very welcome.
Another thing is for conference calls, there are already several free and dead easy solutions out there, so its unclear who this is aimed at.