« Verizon 4G MiFi Obliterates Hotel WiFi | Poke People In The Eye With Truth And Then Give Them A Hug »

My Gradual Shift From Skype to Google Hangouts

I’ve tried to aggressively shift to video conferencing instead of audio conferencing for anything longer than a 15 minute call. I’m also giving a lot of talks around the world, especially on Startup Communities, so rather than travel and burn a day (or more), I’m doing 30 minute videoconferencing things remotely. And, as anyone who has ever asked me to speak to a class of students knows, I have a huge weakness for always saying yes to this so I’ve been doing this via videoconferencing as well.

After exploring a bunch of different options last year, I decided to use Skype everywhere since it was “good enough”, simpler, and portable. I equipped my desktops with HD cameras, took my MacBook Air on the road, and didn’t look back, until recently.

I noticed that twice last week I had horrible Skype connections. One was a US call and one was for a 30 minute presentation to a group of about 200 people in Barcelona at the Silicon Valley Comes to Barcelona event. In the US case I was using my Verizon 4G MiFi, in the Barcelona case I was tethered to my AT&T iPhone.

Skype completely failed in each case. Audio worked but we couldn’t get a sustained video connection. Each time we tried Google Hangouts as a backup. It worked flawlessly on exactly the same connection.

This was a classic A/B test. Yesterday, when I was on a Skype three way call, where one of the callers kept freezing and the other kept getting higher resolution focus, all I could think was “I wish we were on Google Hangouts.” After talking to a friend at Google who said that Hangouts is now pervasive at Google, I’m going to try it more frequently.

Any feedback from any of you about performance / quality of Skype vs. Google Hangouts?

February 28th, 2012 Categories: Tech I Use Tags: collaboration, google hangouts, skype, tech i use, video conferencing

http://hdemott.wordpress.com Harry DeMott

funny you write this. I was doing a board meeting with a company in Portland Oregon on a day I had to be in Orlando Florida. could not get a sustained Skype connection no matter what I used. I could hear them fine – couldn’t hear me. Not a very good way to do a board meeting!
http://twitter.com/VineetDevaiah Vineet Devaiah

I have said this before. Hangouts is the killer app phenomenal transcoding ..
http://twitter.com/defectron Raul Mihali

You’ll get performance. It’s Google. Though the true problem is videoconferencing. No longer fun, obsolete. I almost never feel a true connection with the speakers/viewers, gets worse larger the crowd.
This needs a desperate revolution, something engaging, maybe haptic conferencing tech, maybe a certain type of 3d, maybe a better balance speaker/viewer. I’d have loved to spend some time myself if I wasn’t knee deep in too many projects already.

http://www.feld.com bfeld

You’ll love the Oblong Mezzanine product. It’s starting to appear in the wild. High end for now, but broad based.

http://twitter.com/defectron Raul Mihali

Thanks. Mezzanine is very nice, like for sure the clear understanding that design and simplicity is their goal. Needs a bit of Apple? (“white, one button and fits in your pocket”). It’s amazing how even a power outlet can be a puzzle these days.

Would love something where the stream is repeated to the phones of the viewers (no more squinting from the last row). Also make everyone feel like they can speak up somehow, as they would 1on1. I want those so called “stupid” questions which are so difficult to reach at. And if I could look in the crowd and have a quick teleprompter id on who’s who so I could also ask with context (their name, a one liner bio and perhaps quick commonalities we may have plus some realtime stats on the crowd overall, I’d feel a better synergy). Might not be so hard with simple IR tags on everyone. Sorry if I digress, hope Hangouts works for you for now!

Josh Sims

Permanant forehead IR tags are inevitable… Not much telephony knowledge here but picturing the virtual lecture where you have a presenter and a group of students, present or distributed, each attending/viewing a presentation through an enabled device. If they have a question, they raise their ‘hand’ and the teacher/speaker can acknowledge them, in doing so, their camera is enabled and they are engaged in a two-way video conference, albeit temporarily, that is visible to all. So, really, all you need to have is three layers of activity. The stream from the presenter, the virtual hand/messenger and the option to engage temporarily in a two-way conversation. I know there are paid for solutions that accomplish this and more from cisco/webex but they are more about virtual meeting where all sources are pushing and pulling video up to I think 16 participants… i’d rather see a simplified freeware we might expect out of google… and some IR tags with head-mounted laser sighted readers for the presenter of course.

@bfeld … I was skyping from iphone4 last week to grand-parents who are not on apple (facetime) and I know the wifi connections (comcast digital cable for me and verizon fios for them) were fast and the picture may as well have been a tin can on a string. Time to try hangouts.

http://shuttlecloud.com/ EduardoF

We’ve also switched to Google Hangouts. The quality is just better and you can’t beat free 3-way video-calling.
http://curapersonalis.info/ John J. Walters

I don’t know about Google Hangouts, but I know that I cannot get a sustained Skype video call on my laptop no matter what I do, and Google Video Chat always works fine and dandy like sour candy. Skype works okay on my phone, though, which is a Droid that uses a 4G connection and front-facing camera.

I second Raul’s comment that the industry is in need of an overhaul, though. I’ve tried participating in webinar calls and video conferences etc. and none of them seemed to be much fun once the group got bigger than a few people. It might as well just be a pre-recorded video with the option to email in questions and then tune into a follow-up when the best ones are answered.
http://www.alearningaday.com Rohan

I’m increasingly using Google Hangouts for 3 way conferencing simply because Skype doesn’t do group video chat free and that’s a pain.

I haven’t seen a marked difference in quality but that’s also because I haven’t really tried it on multiple connections.

Google Hangouts is definitely growing on me…
http://blog.hegranes.com/ jonathan hegranes

We’ve recently been debating whether or not to upgrade our Skype account in order to get three-way video… I really didn’t want to do this after having Skype not only suck at video, but also regularly crash (twice last week during demos).

Just tried my first hangout and loved it. Thanks for the tip… Can’t wait for our weekly meeting (NYC & SF) later today.

Amazing how far Skype has fallen, plus a deeper lessen as to when and where you want to monetize your business. With Google+ and Hangouts (not to mention Apple’s Facetime and others) coming hard and fast into this space, Skype has to be thinking differently into its value for users.
Jamesdanielwright

I can completely concur!
As a part time MBA student at Ucla Anderson myself and peers are balancing a very busy schedule of work, class, group projects and all the other side things like startups and family.

We have made a complete transition to google+ where we can interact, discuss and work on documents all at the same time!

The quality and integration of these google products has allowed us to optimize our time and create a wonderful learning experience.
http://blogmutt.com Scott Yates

I wonder if Hangouts is going to be the tail that wags the Google+ dog.
Dan Abdinoor

I was never a very big fan of Skype to begin with. So when Google Hangouts became available I switched immediately. Haven’t looked back either, I use it every day to meet with remote team members. I especially love the quirky add-ons like the Movember Mustache and December Reindeer.
http://epcostello.com/ e.p.c.

I wonder if what you’re seeing is the combination of using 3g/4g for transport and the difference between Skype’s mesh-like network and Google’s dedicated bandwidth. That is, 3g/4g is likely to be more error prone in general (not an issue when surfing or downloading, but for real-time audio/video it’s apparent). Skype routes via other skype nodes or supernodes between you and your audience. If you’re doing a multi-user conference call then whomever Skype detects to have the best combination of computer and network performance “hosts” the call, potentially causing all of the audio/video to be routed through your computer.

For Google Hangouts, you’re connecting to Google’s backbone and whomever you’re talking to is also connecting to the Google backbone (even if they’re outside the US my guess is that they connect to a preferred google network locally which then uses Google’s routing between parties to the Hangout).

More simply: Google has big honking pipes for you to transmit data through, the weakest connections will be between participants and Google’s network. Skype relies on the mesh of pipes amongst participants and other Skype nodes.

http://www.feld.com bfeld

Possible but I have regular trouble on Skype on a high speed connection when one end is fast and the other end is slow. I haven’t had this issue with Google Hangouts.
http://twitter.com/MichaelTuckerTV Michael Tucker

I have used both Hangouts & Skype over 3G. Hangouts win hands down with a consistent quality video/audio stream.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=676560319 Paul C. McTaggart

Brad:

I have seen the same degradation of Skype’s video quality on multiple networks: AT&T, Comcast, Rogers (Canada), Telus (Canada) over the last two months.

We have started doing side-by-side comparisons on the same networks with Skype vs. Hangouts this past month. Google Hangouts has come out on top every time for video/audio quality.

Google Hangout’s UI is clunky and awkward but hands-down beats Skype on reliability & quality.

Paul
Louis Gray

Glad to hear Hangouts are working out great for you Brad. I have found myself using them not just to talk with friends across the web, but also for 1:1 conversations with family and colleagues. If high quality video (and doc sharing) is a click away, it becomes incredibly easy to fire one up.
http://freepository.com John Minnihan

Piling on: when skype works, it is somewhat magical.

When it doesn’t, it’s simply another POS application that is wasting my time. Virtually every call I’ve made w/ it has had some form of issue, ranging from nuisance video chop to outright video freeze or drop, sometimes w/ audio issues too.
http://www.softlayer.com Paul Ford

I had a Skype Video call with the Teams at JDFI in Singapore last night Brad. The audio worked perfectly, but the video signal only lasted for a minute or so. Ended up doing the preso “blind” – they could see me, but I couldn’t see them. Sucked! (for Me) Thanks for the Google Hangouts suggestion Brad! Im going to give this a whirl…
http://twitter.com/andyidsinga andyidsinga

I’ve been resisting google+ (just because) ..based on the post and comments it sounds compelling though
http://twitter.com/andyidsinga andyidsinga

BTW - brad – like the “duderino” badge thingy — you’re getting pretty damn close to “The Dude” look – just need to add a box of half and half to your pic and always have it in view when you do the video conferencing
http://twitter.com/Rick_Mason Rick_Mason

Funny I was just at a conference where a Google hangout with a remote presenter was a total failure. The organizer ended up having to connect with his cell phone which he held up to the microphone which worked flawlessly.

http://www.feld.com bfeld

Bizarre although that sounds like it might have been something on the remote presenters laptop?

Fred von Graf

I’ve found that Google Hangout works much better when connecting to users with lower bandwidth connections. I’m not using Hangouts for 90%+ of my business chats and Skype with family / friends mainly because of the audience’s adoption rate of new tech. In other words my mom knows how to use Skype so don’t change it!
http://www.f2f2s.com/ Ryan Anderson

I use Google Hangouts multiple times per week thanks to how easy it is to do group video conferences and share screens. Our marketing team has people who travel, people in Atlanta, and a person in Switzerland. Our analyst team has people in Atlanta, Indiana, and Ohio.

It’s seamless to set up, immediate to get running, and we’ve never had the feedback problems, echo problems, or freezing problems that we tend to run in to when using Skype.
Support

try http://emeet.me also server based: you —> server <– audience
Rishi Shah

Same experience – we moved from Skype to Google Hangouts for a meeting yesterday and had a much better experience on the same connection. RS
http://gamersportal.com Sami Rageb

Skype’s always been notoriously inconsistent with video, and it will take some time for Microsoft to actually impact the product (assuming it’s even an initiative). Peer-2-peer systems are always going to have issues due to poor routes that may exist between the callers, traffic prioritization, etc.

As for google hangouts, I have no real experience that I can attest to. I’ve used Google voice plenty and find it to also be fairly unreliable in terms of predictable functionality.

For anything serious, you might want to consider GotoMeeting (what I use) or another business service, because client-server is far superior. If you want guaranteed performance and reliability, look to the business end of the spectrum. It’s well worth the saving in time and lowered risk profile.

http://www.feld.com bfeld

My problem with GotoMeeting and a bunch of other services are two fold: (1) they are not ubiquitous and always have some weird download issue and (2) I find the exact opposite – while there might be audio consistency, video blows (Adobe is a painful example of this) and virtually every conference has a UI issue with at least one user who can’t figure out what to do. Remember that I’m doing this with many different organizations (vs. one) so it’s really hard to standardize. I literally use all of the classical enterprise collaboration systems (and Webex is the worst) – I have pain every time.

http://gamersportal.com Sami Rageb

Brad, I completely understand the friction that often comes with a commercial service (I hate webex, btw). Give GotomMeeting a shot if you haven’t lately,as their latest video offering is pretty solid. Our team is geo-distributed across the US & Canada and have never had an issue with voice or audio.

I don’t know how ubiquitous Google+ is within your circles (I’m guessing very), and admittedly it’s probably dead simple for people that already know hangouts.

I guess when it comes to troubleshooting, I’d rather help someone navigate an interface than network connectivity. Great discussion!

http://www.feld.com bfeld

I definitely agree that of the collaboration client apps I end up using, gotomeeting is probably the best. But I still find it extremely frustrating.

http://gamersportal.com Sami Rageb

Fair enough. Maybe I should take a more serious look at Google Hangouts. Thanks Brad.

http://david.ulevitch.com/ davidu

@feld — Too slow, I think I had you by a good 12 hours on this post. https://twitter.com/#!/davidu/status/174356649518182403

http://www.feld.com bfeld

Sweet!

http://twitter.com/andyidsinga andyidsinga

okay – I tried it last night with my family up north.

I was using my android phone (galaxy s II) and my folks were using their PC.

vs skype on audio:
audio seemed break up less and lag hardly at all – pretty good full duplex. hangouts wins. I haven’t done enough video to tell if the diff are big.

vs skype on ease of use:
Skype is way easier – “call me on skype” means something – launch skype, find me, call me.

Getting everyone in the hangout was a fucking chore – especially by going through the messaging feature.

There there should be a “hangout button” in google+

DeAno Jackson

There IS a Hangout button on G+….

http://twitter.com/andyidsinga andyidsinga

I don’t see it (on android G+ app) .. I see “Stream” “photos” “circles” “messenger” “profile”.

However, if I go under “messenger”, click the “+” icon, add a recipient, send a message, then click the little movie camera icon.. then there is a big green “hang out” button.

http://www.JamesSiminoff.com Siminoff

If Larry would pick up his head from trying to kamikaze the Googleplex into Facebook he would open see that Hangouts is by far the best product that came from the entire Google+ rollout and really make it the main feature. What is more social then a bunch of frineds/co-workers chatting with video online.

It is a awesome and very well done group conferencing system and I think as the other commenters have said you will see that it is worth switching to.
Josh Forman

My team does a Google hangout once a week – there are 7 of us. Video/audio quality is sometimes good, sometimes just okay. I also have to do multiple clicks to join the hangout. It never shows up in my stream. I always have to find out who started the hangout, then search for them on google+, and that’s where I can find the button to join the hangout. I haven’t spent much time debugging that, so I may be missing something. And when we get a new person on the team, it is usually a little bit of work to get them to the point of being able to join the hangout.

I’ve only used Skype video for one-on-one, and only 1-2 time per month, and have not had many issues with it at all. I look forward to hearing about your experiences using Google Hangouts more frequently.

http://twitter.com/MichaelTuckerTV Michael Tucker

There is some work to be done when a new person “joins” a hangout, but I remember when we had to download Skype for the first time as well.
If you use Chrome browser there are several apps that let you know what hangouts are available to join.(available in the chrome store).
If you have a set time for the hangout, you may just go to the person’s page who is initiating the hangout and find the blue join button on their page.
Also turn off Skype completely, as this is sucking bandwidth from the hangout..

Another point is to suggest to use a headset/earbuds to stop feedback through the system(even with Skype). The noise cancelling technology that is built in is good, but not infallible.

http://www.facebook.com/marcsanzlopez Marc Sanz Lopez

It indeed saved us in Silicon Valley comes to Barcelona Brad! I couldn’t be more relieved…

Ps. Yes, I was the Google employee in the audience

http://www.feld.com bfeld

It was a pretty awesome moment when it “just worked” after our epic Skype fail.

http://twitter.com/tjcook tjcook

I like Google Hangouts but, for me, they are to Skype what Google+ on the whole is to FB: too big a burden to commit to when you already have basecamp established in one place. My company’s used Skype for over three years as our real-time office. Chat is right there. Calling is right there, and the stability has surpassed any other service available in terms of usability and benefits-per-cost.

Although…

I’m willing to make a deal with Google. Google elevates Hangouts as a product in and of itself, releasing it from hiding within Google+; I use it more .

My company is strong into Google Apps, and I’m sure we’ll see more moves to integrate over the coming release cycles, but I feel the same way socially about Google Hangouts as I do personally about Google Tasks: both products seem to be positioned as value-adds to a larger product (Google+ and Gmail) when there’s so much potential in them if they were just given some time in their own light.
Sarah Hill

I’m a TV newscaster and use Google Hangouts about three times a day… for about three hours a day. The quality is good…we even put the Hangout on TV. The quality of the Hangout depends on the guests’ internet connection for the most part. Recently when our live TV technology failed when it came to covering the Missouri tornadoes…. we used a Hangout to bring our viewers live coverage from the scene…and everyone else in the Hangout got a glimpse at what it was like behind the scenes of a live newscast.
http://www.gamerzpedia.com/ Mark

Google Hangout FTW
Chris

Slightly old but good article on the tech behind Google Hangouts:

http://gigaom.com/video/google-hangouts-technology/The SVC codec is the best out there in terms of network resilience. I don’t believe Google has transitioned Hangouts to WebRTC/VP8 yet, so it might be the virtues of SVC at play.

Of course, there is always the possibility that the service providers are, well, ‘managing’ skype traffic differently than google video traffic. ;-)
Chris

Sorry URL challenged…

http://gigaom.com/video/google-hangouts-technology/
http://engag.io/ William Mougayar

Another classic Google vs. Microsoft battle. I’m using both and alternating, depending on the circumstance. But I was impressed with Circles on the iPhone.
http://twitter.com/stevegarfield Steve Garfield

I’m using G+ Hangouts On Air for a series of shows leading up to SXSW 2012. It’s worked great. You can take a look here http://stevegarfield.tv
Pingback: Mike Mason » Skype for Group Calls: Experience Report
http://www.facebook.com/gustavo.scanferla Gustavo Scanferla

My startup offers multi-party video, up to 20 simultaneous broadcasts. It also offers real-time collaboration apps (notes and screen sharing for now) within the same interface. It runs in the browser and it’s free.It’s dead simple to join and invite everyone. And you have a list with your permanent workspaces / rooms: http://www.pligus.com
Our goal is to enable people to work together as if they were in the same room.

It would be very nice if you guys could give me any feedback, positive or negative
Thanks in advance!
Dazden

oovoo
anyone? like oovoo a lot ..

give
skype a break however…still my primary vc tool…they had 35mil concurrent
users last week…hence issues you have experienced

My Gradual Shift From Skype to Google Hangouts

Related posts:

Popular Tags

Categories