Google+ Hangouts get a facelift, now includes screensharing

Amidst issues regarding its new social search, Google keeps rolling out updates for its Google+ products. Today, Hangouts get a refresh and includes a feature asked for by many, screensharing. The feature was only previously available under “Hangouts with Extras” and has joined the main product.

Here are the updates the Google+ team announced today:

– Screensharing: share what’s on your computer screen with everyone in the hangout. This is the first of many extras we’re graduating to Hangouts proper.

– Bigger video: we’ve put more emphasis on the live video itself by optimizing white space and other screen elements.

In addition to screensharing, Google has refreshed the visuals for Hangouts, increasing the video size and optimizing all of that extra white space that we’ve been dealing with:

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While screensharing is a “cool” social feature, the addition of this means that businesses now have more reasons to try the social service internally. Being able to have multi-user video chat with colleagues is great, but letting your co-workers share their screen no matter where they are is huge.

Using its “sandbox” approach to testing, Google+ promises to include more features that it finds to be successful in optional trials.