At least year’s Google I/O – 2013 – Google introduced us to Hangouts, which was to merge all of their messaging services into one service. Except we still have Google Voice which isn’t merged. But that’s a topic for another day. Google released a Hangouts extension for Chrome, which served it’s purpose, but it’s not the best extension out there. Well it looks like Google is aiming to change that now with a new experience for Chrome. Right now it’s codenamed Ultra Violet.
This information comes from Florian Kiersch. For those unfamiliar with Florian, he has uncovered a few other Google projects that were in progress, like the Google Stars project. He states that the new extension for Chrome would bring us a brand new interface that would include floating chat heads, kind of similar to what Facebook did with their messaging app. There is also a green circle at the bottom which brings up your chat list. You can also tap on any of the profile pictures there in the chat heads and open up the conversation. It feels a lot like Facebook Messenger, but on the desktop and from Google.
It appears that the new extension isn’t quite ready, as it appears that it relies on a bunch of Google API’s that are still in the development version of Chrome, and therefore not ready. Also it has a few bugs to work out, as expected. But we’ll definitely have to keep our eye out on this one. As we’ve been asking for a new extension, or at least a better one. Especially all of us here at Android Headlines since we all use Chrome and Hangouts all day to communicate with our staff here. I’m excited for this new extension to launch. You can check out Kiersch’s site for more info. That is linked in the source below.