Google accounced features like SMS, Location sharing and inline GIF for Google Hangouts

At “A Morning with Google+” event, Google has announced some new updates for Google+ as well as Google Hangouts. Hangouts gets support for SMS, animated GIFs as well as location sharing.
Users will now be able to simply send a map of your current location on Hangouts to your family and friends. Google will now allow users to read and send SMS messages from within Hangouts, instead of making user go through the tedious process of opening another application to read it. The SMS messages will appear quite like IMs inside the Hangouts app.

Users will also be able to add GIF images to their conversations. Besides using those cute smileys, user will be able to send any kind of GIF and it will play within the application.

Google says that broadcasters will now be able to schedule Hangouts on Air and promote them with a dedicated watch page now. Once live, the Control Room feature will let broadcasters moderate the conversation, including ejecting and remote muting. In both cases, Google says that it has improved voice calling quality overall. It’s now full screen on both mobile and desktops and it fixes and enhances webcam lighting by itself.

The Android app and video calling features will be available in the next few days and the On Air improvements are to roll out over the next few weeks.

via tech2