Google Hangouts vs Google Maps

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.

You can download offline data per city or parts of cities if you live in an especially large city, but not for states or countries. Points of Interests are generally more relevant & current than the typical stand alone GPS unit.

Recent updates have made it so you can label a place instead of being stuck with some address or GPS coordinate and forgetting what it represents. Saved places show as stars and are all on one layer as long as you're logged in. There is also the ability to create maps (parallel to groups) for things you might not want to see or have show up all the time whenever you're using google maps from day to day.

This feature is highly helpful for planning, even if you're a person who likes to wing it.

You save the location of your car and easily find it again

Nearby my house, there is major road construction in progress. Apple maps didn’t show this at all, but google maps did. There was also a new, small road that was finished around 3 days ago. Google maps shows this road. Apple maps still hasn’t shown the major construction.

Asides from the stock Apple Maps app, Google Maps is the most commonly supported 3rd party map. 3rd party apps often have links for directions, Google Maps is usually an option whereas other 3rd party GPS apps are not.

This is great for night driving or even when going through tunnels as the map will be more visible for low light situations.

Google Maps can now search for and add a route for a second location on the way to the primary location that you are going to and have already routed. Note that it cannot do a third or true multi routing like the desktop webapp can.