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Google is making a big push for Hangouts to be your new best friend, but users of the company’s free Voice service are discovering that enabling messaging on their Gmail account eliminates convenient access for the elder service.
The Verge reported Sunday that Google’s new Hangouts has created a bit of a conundrum for users of Google Voice: Gmail users who choose to enable Hangouts on their account have discovered Google Voice vanishes as a result.
While Voice users can still use Voice from their mobile devices or even the dedicated web app, the convenience of initiating such calls from within Gmail appears to be gone after enabling Hangouts there — it’s one or the other, at least for now.
Thankfully, users can revert from Hangouts back to the classic Google Talk, which also restores Google Voice calling from Gmail. Google has plans to integrate Voice into Hangouts at some point in the future (along with SMS support, which is completely lacking at the moment), so it’s possible this is only a temporary dilemma.
For now it seems that the best solution for Google Voice users who enjoy calling direct from Gmail is to keep Hangouts a mobile-only option — Google Talk on the desktop will still work with third-party clients such as Adium in the meantime, but without a lot of the swanky features introduced by the new Hangouts.
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