As many are aware Google has been updating many of their services lately.  The new Google + looks amazing and I’m anxious to see the changes to Google Maps.  One of the new upgrades that I did not really expect to be that excited about is the new Google Hangouts.

In my experience Google Hangouts was just a Google + feature mainly focused on group video chat…something that I’ve never used.  But Google surprised me by replacing the older GChat with Hangouts.  Hangouts now serves as text chat, picture messaging, and video chat in one.  Check out the video they provided below.

So not only is Google Hangouts an upgraded form of chat within GMail, but they’ve also provided Android, iOS, and even Chrome apps.  Native GChat is something that has been missing from iPhone for some time now.  I’d been using a 3rd party app since my switch and I found it to be OK.  But this new app works seamlessly.  I’d recommend giving it a try if you haven’t yet installed it.