Google is rolling out a new messaging app called Hangouts which combines some of the features of Google Talk and Google+ Hangouts. It’s a single service that lets you chat with friends in one-on-one conversations, participate in group chats, or make video calls.
Hangouts is a cross-platform service. It’s available for Android, iOS, and the Google Chrome web browser. It’s also built into Gmail.
The app borrows a lot of its look and feel from Google+ and it brings some of the video functionality first seen in Google+ Hangouts, including the ability to instantly start a group video chat.
If you use Hangouts on multiple devices, notifications will be synchronized across platforms. So if you dismiss a notification on your iPad, it’ll be gone from your Android phone, for instance.
While some folks had been hoping Hangouts would also combine SMS and Google Voice into a single messaging app for Android, it’s unlikely some of those features would have been possible in the iOS and web apps.
Update: It looks like SMS integration is in the works and should be available in a future update.