"Really Big" Changes Coming to Google Hangouts in 2014, Exec Says

In a recent interview with Live Mint, Google's head of community partnerships for Google+, Steve Grove, revealed some hints toward what we can expect from the social network in 2014. The short answer is big changes not only for Google+, but with how the social network handles images and its Google Hangouts service.

Grove touched on what his company has already done with photos on Google+, like the auto enhancements that are made and the fun "auto awesome features," but he also said that "there are going to be big developments in photos in 2014." Grove didn't say exactly what's going to change, though he did say that the company's strategy is focused on mobile and that "it's very important, especially for photos." Grove believes that live video will soon play a huge role on the social network. "Google+ could do for live video, what YouTube did for recorded video," he told Live Mint.

Grove also touched on Hangouts, Google's chat and video service that now combines chat with SMS on Android. "Another big change is going to be Hangouts, it's a powerful video platform, and we're seeing its broadcast features develop now," he said, again pointing to the importance of live video chat. "It's going to be really big."

Hangouts are already pretty great for staying in touch, while Helpouts is a great tool for anyone who wants to teach or learn using video chat. Any guesses to what Google will enable in 2014? Perhaps we'll see something involving those wearable cameras Google is already prototyping.