Google rolls out Hangouts to Gmail users in India

Google has extended Google+ Hangouts to all Gmail users in India. Making the announcement on its official India blog, Google informed that Gmail users will be able to initiate a one to one video chat with any other Gmail user and would be able to add upto 9 users at once after they sign up for Google+, Google's social networking service.

Users will also be able to watch YouTube videos together, collaborate on Google Docs, play games by adding apps from the menu on the left. They'll also be able to share screens, which means they'll be able to conduct a webinar. Google's also offering an ultra low bandwidth mode for slow connections. It's also integrating Hangouts with Google Calendar, through which users will be able to schedule new Hangouts. Google had first introduced this feature in July 2012. Hangouts were introduced with Google+ and since then Google has been trying to make Google+ more relevant for users who're into Google's product eco-system. It had launched Hangouts in the air for all Google+ users enabling them to broadcast their Hangouts live, last year. It had also allowed users who linked their Google+ IDs with YouTube accounts to automatically share newly uploaded videos. Google had also introduced new features targeting enterprise customers, offering business features of Google+ for free through the end of 2013.

The feature didn't work for us at the time of writing this post, but it would be interesting to see if the move enables Google to attract more new users to Google+ and make the dormant ones active.