We received a lot of questions about the announcement Google made a few weeks ago. Some media and news sites are exaggerating that Google is killing HOA or ditching the service. Unfortunately, some people interpret that in the wrong way.
First of all, Google is not “killing” Hangouts on Air. It’s deprecating its Google+ platform which isn’t that popular as they hoped it would be. Google Hangouts on Air is a part of that Google+ platform, but the HOA service will continue. On September 12th, it won’t be possible anymore to use HOA from Google+. Â BUT, the Hangouts On Air service will be exclusively available from ‘Youtube Live‘ on the Youtube site (which it was already for a long time). So it will still be available, but it won’t be available anymore from Google+ (which I think is a good thing). For you that don’t know: Google is the owner of Youtube, and ‘Youtube Live’ gives you more options to configure your stream.
This adjustments won’t have any impact on our plugin, only the way you start your webinar (when using HOA) is from a different site now. However, if you do have an event planned with Hangouts on Air, and you already scheduled it on Google+, then please move this over and schedule it on the Youtube site. After the 12th of September you won’t be able to use HOA from the Google+ site anymore.
Our documentation page about HOA is adjusted for the changes, and I would advise you to take a look at it before your next live webinar.
Please let us know if you have any other concerns or questions. Glad to give you answers!
Cheers!
