Hangouts is getting worse as far as I'm concerned.
Google Talk had only chat, but I could trust it to work as intended and deliver my messages. With Hangouts:
- synchronization between devices is not as good. I will often not see everything I typed on my mobile when I open it on my desktop.
- Messages do not arrive in order !!! Sorry for the triple exclamation marks, but this is implemented in the most stupid way I have ever seen in an IM application. Say we are using Hangouts on my mobile. You send the messages
A
B
C
Occasionally, I will receive C first, then A, then B. Fine. I receive C and read it.
C
<--- I've read until this point and will ignore anything above
Then I receive A and B. And this happens :
A
B
C
<--- I've read until this point and will ignore anything above
Messages A and B, having been sent before, will appear above the last message I have read and I will probably miss them.
I preferred Google Talk as well, especially since it was built upon an open platform and was easily implemented on unsupported OSes (Windows Phone via IM+ for example). Personally I haven't seen the out-of-order issue in one on one conversations, but it's prevalent in the group chats I'm in. When it happens to my messages, it's almost always when I'm being handed off between towers on the go; it hasn't happened to me on WLAN yet. Since there are no message size limitations like SMS has, I rarely send multi part messages anyway.
Google Talk had only chat, but I could trust it to work as intended and deliver my messages. With Hangouts:
- synchronization between devices is not as good. I will often not see everything I typed on my mobile when I open it on my desktop.
- Messages do not arrive in order !!! Sorry for the triple exclamation marks, but this is implemented in the most stupid way I have ever seen in an IM application. Say we are using Hangouts on my mobile. You send the messages
Occasionally, I will receive C first, then A, then B. Fine. I receive C and read it. Then I receive A and B. And this happens : Messages A and B, having been sent before, will appear above the last message I have read and I will probably miss them.