Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Google is one big company that single-handedly ruled the Internet. It holds major market share in almost all the fields. Let it be a search engine, advertisement platforms, social networking, blogging and communication. Google hangouts let you have a text-based as well as audio and video communication.
Google has added a lot of features in Hangouts and has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years. The main issue which the users were facing was the low quality of voice and video calls. Google was trying its level best to address the issue, but as the connection was built via Google server, a lot of bandwidths was getting wasted during the process.
Google hangouts rolled out a small but very significant update i.e. P2P (peer to peer) connections during calls instead of going through a Google server. Service providers like Skype have been using similar technology for years and people who like Google Hangouts more than Skype were frustrated by the low quality of sound during calls.
In a recent statement, Google mentioned that the new rollout patch will help the users to connect other users directly without using any Google server which will help in achieving better sound and video quality.
So how this system actually works? The IP of both the users is captured by the system and it is used to find the exact location of the users. Then a direct connection is made between two points. The P2P connections are faster and have better quality. This will have a great impact on the users who prefer to use Google hangouts.
Though while making P2P connections, it is very easy for malicious people to track a person through IP address. This problem has been faced by many Skype users in the past. The attackers only need to capture your IP address and use tools to track your locations. Such tools are available for free and in abundance all over the internet. Just a month ago, Skype has stopped showing IP address by default and finally put a plug on the issue.
On the other hand, Google hangouts rolled the system upgrade in a way that the IP addresses are not revealed to any of the users and the connection remains private. The system looks safe at the moment and we are sure that Google will keep it in that way only. In the past, Google has faced many issues regarding privacy leaks and they have managed to address the issues very quickly.
