Google Hangouts vs Matrix

Hangouts offers both an Android and iOS app so users can participate from nearly any mobile device in addition to his Desktop.

Any user can share his screen (or only a specific desktop or window) while still continuing an audio conversation.

Hangouts works with up to 10 participants using video out of the box or up to 15 if you are a business, government or school. It determines who is the primary speaker at any given time, and the camera view automatically switches to that user.

Hangouts can scale to become a videoconferencing solution for an entire company, since the software can run on nearly all platforms. In fact, Google itself uses Hangouts as its meeting room video conference software.

Hangouts is integrated with Gmail & Google+, does not require you to download desktop software, and all chats can take place directly in your browser, significantly reducing the barrier to entry for a new user.

Google offers all features of Hangouts completely free. There are business, education and government solutions that increase the participant count to for video calls to 15 and offers support.

Hangouts work on Android, iOS, Chrome OS, web and as a Chrome extension.

With Google+ “Hangouts on Air”, you can broadcast any hangout to an unlimited audience via your Goolge+ Profile or simply a generic YouTube link. Moreover, any Hangout on Air (public or private) is automatically saved as YouTube video that you can keep for private reference or use in any way that you would normally share a YouTube video. This allows you to record conversations without additional obtrusive software.

Allows for a fixed phone number, receiving and making calls. Calling US or Canada is free.

When chatting with people while trying to plan a meet up, the share map button can be extremely useful.

Matrix is an open standard, defining simple HTTP APIs so that devs can easily write their own clients, bots, bridges or servers. You're not locked into a specific set of implementations.

Matrix has bridges to IRC (freenode, moznet, oftc, snoonet etc), Slack, Gitter, Rocket.Chat, XMPP, SMS, SIP and others. The point is to 'matrix' all the different networks out there into one single decentralised network.

Riot.im is the easiest way to use Matrix, with great clients for Web, iOS and Android (and Fdroid).

Matrix is decentralized, there's no one central point that the information goes through and so no once central point of failure or control.

Matrix aims to "provide an analogous ecosystem to email - one where you can communicate with pretty much anyone, without caring what app or server they are using" using a neutral identity system.

Matrix is designed to support Instant Messaging, VoIP/WebRTC signalling (voice and video) and Internet of Things communication.

Riot.im includes an app store with integrations for Github, JIRA, Jenkins, Giphy etc - and anyone can add more via Matrix.

Which can be found here.

Matrix is designed to support Instant Messaging, VoIP/WebRTC signalling and Internet of Things communication and allows cross-communication between those services. Meaning one person could be using IRC and another Slack for IMs, or one person could be using Skype and another Google Hangouts for videoconferencing.

Matrix features end-to-end encrypted chats which are syncronized accross all your devices.

E2E is implemented in the matrix-js-sdk library and Riot.im client.