This Google Hangouts news nearly slipped through the radar, but thankfully was picked up and put out on the internet for all the world to see.
The leak hints at a major update to Google’s Talk replacement that could make it look a lot more like Facebook Messenger. Florian Kiersch was able to obtain a test build of Hangouts, which is known internally at the Google offices as UltraViolet and it shows a startling resemblance to Facebook’s “chat heads” that it released on Facebook’s Messenger app not too long ago.
According to Kiersch, floating profile icons are just one of the many UI changes expected to come to Hangouts for Android in the near future. It’s also somewhat of a possibility that this feature won’t see the light of day since it is an experimental build of Hangouts, but time will tell.
Google Hangouts is downloadable on iOS and Android devices.