Overview

Microsoft Teams

Stacks2.4K

Followers1.7K

Votes144

Google Hangouts Chat

Stacks127

Followers109

Votes6

Google Hangouts Chat vs Microsoft Teams: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Google Hangouts Chat and Microsoft Teams

Google Hangouts Chat and Microsoft Teams are two popular team communication tools that offer similar features but also have some key differences.

Integration with Other Tools: Google Hangouts Chat offers seamless integration with other Google Workspace tools such as Google Drive, Meet, and Calendar. It allows users to share and access files, schedule meetings, and collaborate within the same ecosystem. On the other hand, Microsoft Teams offers deep integration with various Microsoft Office tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Teams also integrates well with other Microsoft services such as SharePoint and OneDrive.
Guest Access: Google Hangouts Chat allows team members to invite external guests to join conversations and collaborate without the need for a Google account. Guests have limited access and cannot participate in private discussions. In contrast, Microsoft Teams offers guest access but requires guests to have a Microsoft account or be part of an organization that uses Azure Active Directory. Guests in Teams have similar capabilities as regular team members and can participate in private channels.
Interface and User Experience: Google Hangouts Chat provides a clean and simple interface, focusing on a streamlined messaging experience. It offers threaded conversations, direct messaging, and group chat features. Google's minimalist design philosophy is reflected in Hangouts Chat's user experience. On the other hand, Microsoft Teams has a more comprehensive interface with various features and collaboration tools. Teams incorporates channels, conversations, files, tabs, and a wide range of integrations, making it a hub for team collaboration and project management.
Search Capabilities: Both Hangouts Chat and Microsoft Teams offer search functionalities, but there are differences in their capabilities. Google Hangouts Chat leverages Google's powerful search technology, allowing users to find messages, files, and other content quickly. It also offers advanced search operators and filters to refine search results. Microsoft Teams provides search capabilities, but the search experience is more limited compared to Google. Teams' search primarily focuses on finding messages and files within channels and chats.
Chatbots and Automation: Google Hangouts Chat supports chatbots and automation through its integration with Google Workspace. Users can build custom chatbots using Google Apps Script or leverage pre-built chatbots from the Google Workspace Marketplace. These chatbots can automate tasks, provide information, and perform various actions within Hangouts Chat. Microsoft Teams also supports chatbots and automation through the Microsoft Bot Framework. Teams offers a development platform for creating custom chatbots and integrates with other automation tools such as Power Automate.
Availability and Pricing: Both Google Hangouts Chat and Microsoft Teams have different availability and pricing models. Google Hangouts Chat is part of Google Workspace offerings, and its availability and pricing vary depending on the selected plan. Google Workspace offers different tiers starting from free access up to enterprise-level plans. On the other hand, Microsoft Teams is available as part of Microsoft 365 subscriptions. It is bundled with various plans, ranging from personal subscriptions to enterprise and education plans.

In Summary, Google Hangouts Chat and Microsoft Teams differ in terms of integration with other tools, guest access, interface and user experience, search capabilities, chatbot and automation capabilities, and availability and pricing models.

Advice on Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts Chat

carlche0616

Oct 11, 2020

Decided

As it is the communication tool chosen for the course, our team will be using Slack to monitor the course announcements from our instructor as well as to communicate with the instructor and industry partners. The tool for communicating within the team will be Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams enables the team to share documents and edit them synchronously(Google Drive is not an option due to one team member's location). Since it also provides a group chat feature, we chose to use it as our communication tool to avoid using too many softwares.

197k views197k

Comments

Mohammad Hossein

Chief Technology Officer at Planallay Sdn Bhd

Jan 17, 2020

Decided

we were using slack and at the same time we had a subscription with office 365. after a while we hit the slack free limitation quota. and it got annoying. the search ability was useless in free tier. and more annoying whenever you search, it opens a webpage and doesn't do it in the app.

on mobile there were many cases that I didn't get notification of important discussions. rooms was the way to separate a talk. but it become tedious. each time for a new subject that you wanted to discuss, you needed to add all the team members into a new room. and after a while the room goes silent. you will end up with a tons of not-in-use rooms that you don't want to clean up them for history purposes. also the slack UI for sub discussion is very stupid. if someone forget to check the checkbox to post the subdiscussion in the main discussion thread, other team members even won't notice such discussion is in progress.

we was paying for office 365 and thought why not give the teams a shot. we won't be in worth situation than we are. we moved to teams and we loved it instantly, we had a separate tab aggregated all the files upload. we could reply on other talk. no need of creating a new room. this way room belongs to a team and not a certain topic. our sub discussion was visible to the whole team. enjoyed integration with azure and unlimited history. the best part was integration with outlook. it was a full suit solution. our stats become busy on outlook meeting events. we get weekly analyse. we didn't need to host our wiki seperated. we've created wiki per team. the communication was much more fun.

266k views266k

Comments

Hirotaka

Undergrad at DCSIL

Oct 7, 2020

Decided

Communication We have chosen two tools for our team communication.

Slack

We choose Slack since all of us are familiar with this communication tool. We have a private channel for our team Sphinx for text messages. We added Github apps inside our private channel for repo update notifications. Furthermore, we could contact the subject matter experts within the workspace DCSIL directly for the issues we meet.

Microsoft Teams

We use Microsoft Teams for virtual meetings for its fast connection speed. In addition, the call feature in Slack is a paid feature, and we could have virtual meetings and share screens for free in Microsoft Teams.

192k views192k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Microsoft Teams	Google Hangouts Chat
See content and chat history anytime, including team chats with Skype that are visible to the whole team. Private group chats are available for smaller group conversations.	Whether in a 1:1 chat or a dedicated group workspace, collaborate with your team in an organized way. Share and discuss Docs, Sheets, and Slides all in one place.
All your content, tools, people, and conversations are available in the team workspace;Enjoy built-in access to SharePoint, OneNote, and Skype for Business;Work on documents right in the app	Schedule meetings; Create tasks; Get updates from your team right in Chat; Search with the power of Google; Smarter chat with bots; Use across your devices; Integration with all of Google Suite plus many third-party apps
Statistics
Stacks 2.4K	Stacks 127
Followers 1.7K	Followers 109
Votes 144	Votes 6
Pros & Cons
Pros 29 Work well with the rest of Office 365 work flow 24 Mobile friendly 19 Free 12 Great integrations 12 Well-thought Design Cons 17 Confusing UI 12 Bad performance on init and after quite a use 10 Bad Usermanagement 6 Can't see all members in a video meeting 6 No desktop client (only fat and slow electron app)	Pros 3 Free 3 Reliability Cons 1 No video or voice messages 1 No markdown 1 No media editor 1 No voice chat 1 No auto-delete
Integrations
Skype	Jira G Suite Trello Amazon Polly FreshDesk RingCentral Zenefits Statsbot MeisterTask Salesforce Sales Cloud

What are some alternatives to Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts Chat?

Slack

Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together.

HipChat

HipChat is a hosted private chat service for your company or team. Invite colleagues to share ideas and files in persistent group chat rooms. Get your team off AIM, Google Talk, and Skype — HipChat was built for business.

Zulip

Zulip is powerful, open source team chat that combines the immediacy of real-time chat with the productivity benefits of threaded conversations. Zulip allows busy managers and others in meetings all day to participate in their teams chats.

RocketChat

Rocket.Chat is a Web Chat Server, developed in JavaScript, using the Meteor fullstack framework. It is a great solution for communities and companies wanting to privately host their own chat service or for developers looking forward to build and evolve their own chat platforms.

Mattermost

Mattermost is modern communication from behind your firewall.

Gitter

Free chat rooms for your public repositories. A bit like IRC only smarter. Chats for private repositories as well as organisations.

Flowdock

Flowdock is a web-based team chat service that integrates with your tools to provide a window into your team's activities. With the team inbox, everyone on your team can stay up to date. Stay connected with Flowdock's iOS and Android apps.

Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio and files of any type. It provides instant messaging, simple, fast, secure and synced across all your devices.

Keybase Teams

Keybase is for anyone. Imagine a Slack for the whole world, except end-to-end encrypted across all your devices. Or a Team Dropbox where the server can't leak your files or be hacked.

Fleep

Leave email behind and manage all conversations with your team, partners and clients in Fleep. If some of them are not Fleep users yet, they will receive all messages as normal emails.