Hangouts

 Hangouts  was a Google messaging tool that supported chat, groups, and videoconferencing, and will be migrated to Google Chat 2022-11-01. 

Creating public video hangouts has resulted in hangout spam in the past — typically this takes the form of random people popping up in your hangout and groaning, shouting or making other loud noises.

Fortunately hangouts need not be made public — anyone can join a “private” hangout given the URL.

Previously, the Hangouts app on Android also handled SMS/MMS, but that feature was removed 2017-05-22.

How to set up a hangout for remote participation

 * Go to Google+
 * In “hangouts” (top right as of 2013-09), create a new hangout
 * Add at least one person to the hangout
 * In the new hangout window, copy the URL
 * People can now join by visiting that URL — paste it into a note, event etherpad or IRC or all of the above

API shutdown

 * https://developers.google.com/+/hangouts/support-faq "The Google+ Hangouts API is no longer supported. New apps cannot be created but existing apps will continue to run until April 25th, 2017. After that date, apps in Hangouts will no longer function."

SMS drama

 * http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/google-hangouts-7-0-for-android-asks-users-to-stop-using-it-for-sms/