[gum_ina_package]

Finally! I don't know anyone who likes G+ over Skype, but we all use it for the group video features.

[finkin1]

I'm the CEO of a small remote-working startup with 5 employees. I pay $20/mo for Skype since some of people I meet with only use that and I need the group screen sharing feature. Whenever I have a Skype meeting, I'm nervous, because 50% of the time video or screen sharing won't work. Once I get them to switch to Hangouts there's no problems, ever.

Are you telling me that you experience the opposite? If so, that's very odd.

[perbu]

We've been using hangouts more or less exclusively for at least a year. Hangouts are very stable. When doing training we have hangout sessions that last for two days (minus the nights of course). The problem with hangouts are with access control. Most people are not signed in with an ID that matches their email address and I still don't know how to schedule a hangout that is protected only by it's URL.

[junto]

We use Skype chat as a daily tool to keep the team (a few remote) up-to-date. We have daily standup using a proper mic so the remotes can hear properly.

I find the screen sharing feature in Skype to be poor quality. We tend to use Skype for calls, and then join.me for screen sharing.

We sometimes have call quality problems on Skype too. We also switch to hangouts for this reason, and we are often surprised how good the call quality, video quality and screen share quality is on hangouts.

Only problem is that nobody can figure out how to login or start a hangout. The interface is damn awful. They need a simple app like Skype's that installs like Chrome does, and give me history for gods sake. How hard is that to deliver?

One of the reasons I shy away from hangouts, is that I use Skype to backfill my timesheet. I can see exactly what calls, video calls, chats I made going back to 2006 on Skype's history. Admittedly so can the NSA, but still, the feature is awesome from a work perspective.

[jypepin]

I feel you. I used to use skype for communication with my family, but grew tired of it not working properly. My parents never were able to use properly Hangout because it is too counter-intuitive for them (log on gmail - oops forgot my password, find the chat bottom left window, "Why do you make me go to my emails to chat with you, son?"). Too bad because the few times I was able to connect with them, it was such a better experience than Skype.

I bought an iPad to my mom for Christmas and facetime with them now. It's the best I've found - even easier for them to use than Skype. They call me, I call them, there no confusion anymore.

No idea about the group chat, but I will agree on Skype working really badly (despite their 10+ years of experience) compared to newer solutions as hangout and facetime.

[unreal37]

I've never really had a good G+ Hangout video call. The video from others is always so terrible. I used Skype Video for years, to remote parts of the world even, and had few problems.

[AxisOfEval]

You should try using Fuze. We replaced Hangouts and Skype with it. Best of all, it is free for 25 simultaneous users in a chat/video.

[_wmd]

I prefer Skype since although it has always been a huge CPU hog, its UI is perfect for beginners (i.e. family) and in the decade I've used it, I've never once been cross-sold some pointless feature the parent company are currently trying to promote.

Note Hangouts itself once was Gtalk, which I was a user of, prior to the first cattle herding on to Google+. Now Gundotra is out the door, there is no telling into which silo existing G+ users will be cattle-herded next. Hangouts might be technically superior (although I personally think Skype's rate-adaptive video is second to none), but the treatment of users by its parent company, and their endless thirst for personal data keeps me far away.

Skype just works, just like it has for the past decade, and just like I expect it will continue to in the coming years. I'd place a small wager on Hangouts being long dead, or at the very least rebranded before then

[nobotty]

Are you kidding? Skype is CONSTANTLY cross-selling you some useless bullshit with the in-interface ads. It's terrible, and the reason I won't use it.

[why-el]

Really good point on Skype being friendly to beginners. I never realized it but my parents get really uncomfortable when I try to walk them over how to set up Google Hangout, and most of the time the conversation just continues on Skype and we drop the experiment. I mean for them its a hassle to install all those plugins and then invite and open emails and confirm and whatnot.

[ezrameanshelp]

As a user of several Google products, the "cattle-herded" metaphor is perfect. Not a week goes by without my needing to counsel a former Picasa users nursing wounds from the great G+ herding of 2013.

[Aardshaark]

On Windows, if Internet Explorer is not your default browser (or possibly if Chrome is your default browser, not sure), Skype uses far more CPU.

Sounds weird, but it definitely made a difference for me.

[mcescalante]

For some reason, G+ hangouts eat a lot more CPU for me than Skype does.

[shawabawa3]

funny, because I don't know anyone who likes skype over G+

[jaibot]

Skype's Linux clients are always wonky. G+ has more ItJustWorks, and the contacts list is already built for me from years of using Google stuff.

[sremani]

I prefer Skype over Google Video in that I can pick my call on my PC, laptop, phone or Xbox One.

Imagine having a group call on Xbox One - TV, that would be a sweet conversation and I for one really appreciate this new feature.

[subdane]

I prefer G+, but the onboarding - actually getting disparate folks easily invited and notified has been inscrutably hard. Part of the prob is that I have multiple gmail accts and address books as do the folks I'm inviting, but another prob seems to be the less than ideal invite workflow. When Goog gets calendars, gmail, docs and hangouts well integrated, Skype will have a serious threat on its hands.

[praeivis]

Funny, because I dont know anyone who use G+ at all. Except these who was forced to make G+ profile while was registering just for e-mail.

And same time I know hundreds who use skype on daily basic on literally every device they own. Including TV. Only device in my house lacking skype it's refrigerator.

[theandrewbailey]

Everyone else in the podcasting network I'm on uses G+, but I like Skype because it's easier to record it with one computer.

[yen223]

G+'s video quality was miles ahead of Skype's. Heck, even FaceTime's video quality was better.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "Heck, even FaceTime's video quality was better."

I've noticed this too. For a while I was on a really poor internet connection and on Skype calls video just didn't work. However FaceTime was practically flawless on the same connection.

[coherentpony]

In my experience, FaceTime's quality has surpassed the others as of recent. Partly due to the new retina screen and HD iPhone camera.

[Trufa]

Seriously? I live abroad and skyped with my family weekly until we switched to G+ to never go back, the quality of the calls and or video difference is not even funny.

[ballpoint]

Yeah everyone I know hates switching to G+ for group calls. We have to use Skype to guide people through the G+ interface and get them on a group call.

[eitally]

Why not just point them at http://g.co/hangouts ?

[reledi]

Every technical person I know prefers Google Hangouts over Skype.

[gygygy]

Every "technical" person. I most times find myself using team-viewer to get G+ to work whenever I have a group chat with my school pals. G+ is great, but unfortunately I have found many non technical people I know have a hard time using it.